Life teaches us a lesson
IT was in the scattering of islands called GALAPAGOS (BBC1) that Charles Darwin came up with his theory of evolution. The subject wasn’t closed when he published his book, though, and as last night’s programme demonstrated we’re still just finding out how life adapts to its surroundings.
Home to more than 1,000 unique species, the Galápagos isles are now facing the challenges of climate change, and presenter Liz Bonnin accompanied a high-tech scientific mission to record the consequences.
Watching this often felt like an episode of early Star Trek, with a shipful of space-age equipment on a mission to explore strange, new worlds. The highlight of last night’s episode (and possibly of Liz Bonnin’s life) was a breathtaking submarine journey into the deepsea darkness, a place less mapped than the moon.
Armed with a sort of robotic hoover, the craft edged its way along the sides of a submerged volcano, gathering samples of whatever life it could find.
The surface was no less jawdropping, though, especially the encounter with the marine iguanas, fierce salt-spraying aquatic foragers, whom Darwin christened “the imps of darkness”. As far as climate change and these unique reptiles go, the news was weird but not bad. Marine iguanas, it seems, possess the ability to digest their own vertebrae to get through times of scarce food.
Clearly there are solid reasons to worry about the changing climate. The iguanas might have learned a trick or two but for some of the thousand-plus other species unique to the Galápagos, the news isn’t that great.
Keen-eyed TV drama bosses would do well to watch THREE WIVES, ONE HUSBAND (C4), which is unfurling into the most complicated soap opera of all time.
Filmed over a year in the Mormon community of Rockland Ranch, Utah, this series goes beyond the obvious points of fascination to see what life is really like in ultrareligious, polygamous households.
God-fearing the Mormons might be (they’re also quietly stashing canned food away for the end time) but they’re also flesh-and-blood folk with feelings.
They started simmering as Abel’s third wife, Marina, went into labour with her second child. With her temporarily out of the way, wife number two Beth talked candidly about her resentment towards the younger woman.
Bouncing around between them and his wiser, calmer first wife Suzie, was Abel, like a Mormon Tigger, if Tiggers had lots of wives.
The baby came, the wives made a stab at sorting out their differences, and then fate (or God, depending on your point of view) bowled them a googly. Abel’s brother died, with one final request. In the Old Testament, they called it the levirate, a brother marrying his widowed sister-in-law. Facing the prospect of another wife and a total of 19 kids, Abel no longer looked quite so chuffed with himself.
Meanwhile, RICH HOUSE, POOR HOUSE (Channel 5) took two large-ish families and had them swap houses for a week.
Leaving his council house, Mr Williams was pleased at the thought of there only being 58p left on the electric meter. The Caddy family, more used to their grand villa and their regular foreign holidays, didn’t complain. Forced to use credit meters and pay-as-you-go phones, they absorbed one basic truth of economics. The poor pay more.