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Dr Jonny Keeling, the executive producer of the new BBC Earth series, talks about the joys and challenges of documenting remarkable new animal behaviour across all seven continents

GQ: How does the series move forward from previous BBC Natural History Unit series?

Dr Jonny Keeling: There are, of course, echoes of series like Planet Earth II and Blue Planet II because they were great successes but Seven Worlds, One Planet is very different in several ways. This is the biggest series on biodiversity ever produced. Life on earth is at risk, so we’ve taken a big step forward in featuring these threats to our planet.

So in the Antarctic episode, we have a story about climate change but you’ll see it, it’s not just mentioned. You’ll see how climate change is impacting animals and it’s intended to be visual and emotional. Then there’s a story about the historic damage done by whaling, which you’d expect to be distressing but actually shows a positive reversal in recent years. Either way, I’d say at least one, often two sequences within each episode has a focus on biodiversity and the loss thereof.

We also frame everything in terms of geology. We start off by saying

200 million years ago there was one supercontinent called Pangea and that broke apart. That had a significant impact on the diversity of life on Earth because if there was one great big, homogenous continent, you wouldn’t have the incredible diversity that we do. That geology is in every episode: we’ll learn about mountain formations and continents that crashed together, and how that impacted the animals that live there. We’ve never featured this kind of geology before and it helps to give – almost literally – a backbone and a framework to those stories.

We’ve never broken the planet down by continents before, which is nice because we all belong to a continent: we don’t all come from a mountain or a jungle or a desert, which is the previous way documentaries usually break down the planet. This gives us a sense of belonging and the sense of a tangible place. It’ll make viewers feel closer to the stories they’re watching. This series features new species, new behaviours, new animals that people won’t have seen, as well as places and locations that we’ve never been to before.

We’ve also filmed them in new ways. We’ve been using a lot of drones and although drones aren’t brand new, in the last couple of years, during the lifetime of this project, they were an integral part. Just with the quality of image that you can get, the time that they can fly, how quiet they are and how animals can just ignore their presence. I’m a biologist by training, and I’ve been making TV shows for 25 years, yet for this series, my team has come to me with animals I’d never even heard of before, let alone, seen or known what they do.

GQ: What challenges did approaching the planet as seven continents present?

Dr JK: One of the hardest things was that with somewhere like Asia – the biggest continent on Earth – you’ve only got one hour to tell the story and show some amazing animals from that continent. So that was one challenge. On the other hand, there are other continents where viewers might think they know what to expect. We challenged ourselves to surprise them. I think people will be curious about Europe. They may think they know it but when I showed some people footage from there, they said, “What’s that animal? I never even knew that it

was in Europe.” I told them that it lives in the Arctic, and they said, “We didn’t know we had an Arctic coastline.” There’s a massive

Arctic coastline across the top of Europe. It’s fascinating to show people a desert in

South America, where penguins are living. So the biggest challenge would be trying to surprise people all the time, both visually and emotionally.

GQ: What sort of undertaking has it been making Seven Worlds, One Planet?

Dr JK: Four years ago, almost to the day, I set off to London to see the commissioner, Tom Mcdonald, at the BBC with the words “seven worlds” and an idea. We were encouraged to develop that further, which involved pulling a team together – months of work. We’ve explored every corner of the planet with a core team of around 30 people and a wider team of more than 1 500 people, many of whom have devoted three years of their lives to this series. One of the producers had a baby in the middle of production and now her baby’s walking and talking. We all love it but it does take up huge chunks of your life. What excites us is finding new stories, then working out how to tell them in an engaging way. I enjoy making people happy. If you can do that with a billion people who watch the programme, that’s about as good as it gets.

GQ: How has the way you tell your stories changed?

Dr JK: Technology, of course.

Our equipment is now smaller and lighter, so we can do things in the field that we couldn’t when we were shooting on film. But I also think our storytelling has improved. There’s a strong narrative to every sequence – it’s more emotionally driven and has much more of a dramatic rhythm than it did 10 or 15 years ago. The sequences are longer thanks to better batteries, stabilised cameras, and improved low light performance. But the upshot is we can tell stories as one would with a scripted drama. You look for a great character to present to the audience that goes through some transformation or a challenge. We’re more refined in the way that we do that, even down to the way in which we select the animal to follow. Lots of thought goes into the sequences, but the idea is to make it look effortless.

GQ: What does it mean to have Sir David Attenborough present a series like Seven Worlds, One Planet?

Dr JK: It makes us extremely proud to be working with Sir David. He’s involved in the scripting and he brings immense knowledge and expertise, as well as his ability to voice something with profundity and emotion. He’s an absolute pleasure to work with. He’s an incredible human being. I’ve been really lucky: I worked with him on The Life of Mammals 20 years ago and occasionally since then. On every project, he’s been amazing.

Catch Seven Worlds, one Planet on Sundays at 4Pm, BBC earth, dstv Channel 184

‘Life on earth is at risk, so we’ve taken a big step forward in featuring these threats to our planet’