WHAT TO WATCH STORMBORN

BBC One, 7pm

“United by the restless Atlantic Ocean, the wild lands of Iceland, Scotland and Norway are holding out for redemption. Holding out for a breath of spring,” intones narrator Ewan McGregor in this new nature series. “These are the realms of the stormborn.” Between that and the programme’s Game of Thrones-style title, it’s clear from the outset that melodrama will be the order of the day. The “stormborn” are the animals that are born and survive in hostile climates and we begin 60 degrees north, in March, where winter is still raging but spring beckons.

Of course, this is all an excuse to marry beautiful cinematography with epic – or often jaunty – orchestral pieces.

We see otter cub siblings squabbling over fish in the freezing waters, a pod of porpoises ambushed by orcas, a power struggle within a herd of Norwegian muskoxen, an Arctic fox looking for his mate – and the flirtation that follows. Over the following two episodes, McGregor will take us through how the animals manage in the 24-hour daylight of summer and then the harsh months as autumn becomes winter. It might not be up there with Attenborough’s latest, A Perfect Planet, but Stormborn is a diverting enough slice of escapism. Catherine Gee crash in January 2019, with witness Roy Warne describing how he freed the 99-year-old Duke from his car. We also learn that the Queen is a “speedy” driver and delve into the Prince of Wales’s garden renovations at Highgrove.

An Arctic fox waits in the snow for his mate