An apex predator to put the T rex to shame
Not long ago, a chunk of fossil fell off a cliff on to a Dorset beach where it was chanced upon by a fossil hunter called Phil. On its flank was incised the most humungous set of fearsome gnashers. He and Steve Etches, whose nearby museum contains Jurassic Coast finds (though none as whopping as this), resolved to extract the rest of the 6ft skull.
What happened next is documented in Attenborough and the Giant Sea
Monster (BBC One), a follow-up to David Attenborough’s encounter with a fossilised “sea dragon” (an ichthyosaur as it turned out) in 2018. It takes a village to drill a big hole halfway down a cliff, extract a massive rock and hoist it up to the top. This (as it were) mammoth task was fascinating enough, but then the real work began of making sense of the find.
The creature from the deep was a pliosaur, reported Attenbough. A pliosaur is a 150-million-year-old maritime predator with twice the bite force of the planet’s current record holder, the saltwater crocodile, and a length of up to 40 feet. The sharpest of its 130 teeth had vertical grooves for enhanced bite efficiency, its snout had sensors for locating prey, while its four propelling flippers operated in sync with the cohesion of a rowing eight.
Plenty of living species offer parallels: crocs and penguins, orcas and great whites. But in the end this pliosaur was a cut above. “I don’t see what could possibly have hurt it,” said Dr Andre Rowe, a Bristol-based American extrovert, first drawn to the UK by the quality of its marine reptiles.
Not even an all-american tyrannosaurus rex, ventured Sir David? “As much as it pains me,” sighed Rowe, “the T rex is going to lose this fight.”
Palaeontology has come on a bit since Attenborough first took an interest in dinosaurs. “I used to think it was just a question of finding a fossil, digging it out and saying how nice it was,” he confessed. It turns out there is a whole ecosystem of palaeo-boffins dotted about various universities, including one at Imperial College London with a mohawk and a big water-tank for testing his motorised model pliosaur in.
However eternally boyish in enthusiasm, Attenborough is two-anda-half years shy of a hundred and rarely gets out into the field. So it was a treat to have this sighting of him here. Normal service was resumed only at the end as he reverted to his role as narrator in a CGI reconstruction of a pliosaur attack. So, one way or another, this reconstruction was a marvellous rarity. Jasper Rees
After a sluggish Christmas schedule, The Tourist (BBC One) gets 2024 off to a vigorous start. It’s just the tonic we need. Series one was the BBC’S most-watched drama of the year. Series two might not reach the same ratings because it lacks the thrill of the new. Jamie Dornan is still an amnesiac, and still on the run from various people without knowing why. But it’s just as much fun.
The action has shifted from Australia to Ireland, where Elliot (Dornan) and Australian girlfriend Helen (Danielle Macdonald) go in the hope of finding his true identity. Before you know it, he’s been bundled into the back of a van by heavies in balaclavas. Before they know it, he’s escaped. Cue the first of many scenes in this series of Dornan running away while swearing.
Writers Jack and Harry Williams are Britain’s answer to the Coen brothers, and the show is so influenced by Fargo that you could transplant many of these characters and scenes straight to Minnesota. They include Helen’s ex, Ethan Krum (Greg Larsen), who is now trying to become an influencer by giving talks on toxic masculinity and reviewing his in-flight meals on social media. When we first meet him, he’s delivering a “Ned Talk” in a community centre: “It’s like a Ted Talk, but a bit more under the radar.”
This series is funnier than the first, by which I mean it’s funnier more often. The type of humour is the same, all anchored by a wonderful performance from Dornan playing a character who has long since stopped being upset and terrified and is now just fed up.
Old characters from series one reappear, but it’s the new ones who provide the most entertainment. They include Detective Ruairi Slater (Conor Macneill), one of those hapless rural police officers who turn up in Irish comedy-dramas. And just when you’re laughing at a stupid joke about someone confusing a gangster named Kostas for a branch of Costa coffee, or someone else belting out a Roxette ballad, along comes a scene in which a someone gets stabbed through the eye. Happy New Year, all.
Attenborough and the Giant Sea Monster ★★★★
The Tourist ★★★★