Attenborough proves he is still a force of nature
A Perfect Planet
BBC One ★★★★ ★
There is surely no such thing as Attenborough fatigue – either for the viewer or for the great man himself – but we’ve been treated to so many remarkable natural history programmes over the years that sometimes one gets a sense of déjà vu. Sweeping drone shots of flamingos on a Tanzanian salt lake? Seen it. Wildebeest being stalked on the Serengeti? Standard fare since the days of ITV’S Survival. Bears catching salmon? So familiar that they sent it up on a John West advert.
A Perfect Planet, Sir David’s latest, gave us all of these. But the quality of the photography was so exquisite, and the narration so spare and intelligent, that it was still required viewing. And the perspective of this series was something new. It explores the great forces of nature that enable life on Earth, with the first episode focusing on volcanoes (future instalments will cover ocean currents, solar energy and weather patterns).
If only school geography lessons were this awe-inspiring, we would have generations of mini-Attenboroughs on our hands.
Why do a million wildebeest assemble in this corner of the Serengeti? Because the grass is rich in calcium and phosphorus, essential minerals for the pregnant females, and those minerals are the product of volcanic ash.
The same goes for the ash-rich waters of the Kamchatka peninsula, made fertile for visiting salmon and thus a perfect lunch spot for bears. Nonetheless, that still doesn’t make the salmon easy to catch at the beginning of the season; there was wonderful footage of one old-timer taking a leisurely dive for dead fish from the lake-bed, while his brethren wasted precious energy trying to land live ones.
Nobody roots for the salmon in these situations, but elsewhere it was watch-through-your-fingers time as a marabou stork picked off a fluffy baby flamingo and a hyena chased a young wildebeest (the latter attack thwarted by a headbutt from a protective parent).
There were also surprising new sights to see. Just when you were cooing over the sweet little finch in the Galapagos, it was revealed to be a vampire finch, severing the quill of a Nazca booby’s flight feather and feeding on its blood. Yikes. The boobies are unperturbed by this behaviour, and scientists have yet to work out why. The finches are driven to it because they have made their home on an extinct volcano and other food sources are scarce.
The “how we filmed it” section is now obligatory on series like these, and always fascinating. We discovered that the cameraman in Tanzania craftily disguised his hide with some cardboard cut-out flamingos, and that local Masai women used their sewing skills to repair the team’s hovercraft.
The segment also reminded us how gruelling it must be to get this footage – especially when you consider A Perfect Planet was four years in the making. The “making of” section did not include footage of Sir David recording the voiceover, although that would have been fun: he narrated the series from his dining room with duvets lining the walls to muffle any echo, as Covid restrictions meant he could not travel to the studio.
Also obligatory: a warning about climate change. Humanity “has become a new kind of super-volcano”, Sir David informed us, each year releasing 100 times more carbon than all the Earth’s volcanoes combined. A sober message which this series will drive home over the course of its run.
‘If only geography lessons were this awe-inspiring, we would have generations of mini-attenboroughs’