Coming in 2021: Frozen Planet II with Sir David, 95!
AT the age of 91 and with no sign of slowing, he’s something of a marvel of nature in himself.
And it appears Sir David Attenborough is even lining up work for 2021 – when he will be turning 95.
It is believed the veteran natural history presenter has been earmarked to narrate the BBC’s Frozen Planet II.
According to jobs advertised on the Corporation’s website, the series will explore the ‘wonder and majesty of the frozen third of our planet’.
The landmark natural history series will be made by the same team behind Blue Planet II.
Filmed ‘deep beneath the Arctic sea ice’, at the top of the Himalayas and in Antarctica’s ‘dry valleys’, it will look at wildlife and highlight recent environmental changes. The BBC’s Natural History Unit is advertising for a producer, assistant producer and researcher for the six-part series, which will come ten years after the first Frozen Planet series.
The producer will oversee filming at high altitude and in waters under ice, according to the job advert.
The successful candidate will be required to ‘seek out those never seen before stories’ to create a ‘fresh visualisation of our mountains and poles’.
Meanwhile, the assistant producer will need to have qualifications that show ‘ experience working in extreme and challenging environments’ – a role not for the faint-hearted. The
‘Extreme environments’
job description says there will be extensive filming ‘in the poles, topside or underwater, and at high altitude’.
The series will seek to tell ‘humorous, tragic and dramatic’ stories, as in the Blue Planet and Planet Earth series. Blue Planet II drew audiences of more than 14million last year and brought the issue of plastic pollution to the fore.
Although ‘greenlight funding’ has not yet been secured for Frozen Planet II, the adverts show that a team is being assembled in anticipation. The first five episodes will take viewers to ‘new worlds’ while the sixth will likely focus on the fragility of polar environments and climate change. The job listings reveal that the sixth episode will also feature ‘the heroic scientists who are trying to make sense of … the fastest changing part of our planet’.
Sir David joined the BBC in 1950 and held several senior positions including BBC Two controller.
He then made his name presenting natural history programmes, including The Blue Planet in 2001.
In a recent Radio Times interview, he was asked at what point he would like to retire. He replied: ‘I would like to think I would be able to detect when I couldn’t find the right words any more. If I think I’m not producing commentary with any freshness, or which is apposite or to the point, I hope I would be able to recognise it before someone else told me.’ He has recently fronted a number of BBC TV shows, including a documentary about a 200 million-year-old sea dragon and an episode of Tomorrow’s World. This year he is working on the show Dynasty, which looks at lions, hunting dogs, chimpanzees, tigers, and emperor penguins.