Attenborough is in tune with Planet Earth
Planet Earth: A Celebration
BBC1, 8pm
OCCASIONALLY, you could be fooled into thinking Sir David Attenborough is finally slowing down and taking it easy.
He was 94 in May, after all. However, there is no stopping the naturalist and national treasure, and next month will see the cinematic release of his new film A Life On
Our Planet.
But before that highly-anticipated feature arrives, Sir David has teamed up with a gaggle of award-winning musicians for Planet Earth: A Celebration, a retrospective aiming to “lift everyone’s spirits”.
The special one-hour programme combines eight of the most extraordinary sequences from Planet Earth II and Blue Planet II with a stunning musical performance.
It will travel around the world, from the East Cape of South Africa to the north of Norway, from Chile to the Indian Ocean, to see how animals overcome adversity in some of the world’s most challenging environments – offering a message of hope to humanity.
Renowned movie composer Hans Zimmer has been joined by Jacob
Shea and the team at Bleeding Fingers to think up new compositions and rearranged original scores.
“Working with David on so many of his magnificent programmes celebrating nature and our planet has been a joy for me,” Zimmer says.
“I am constantly inspired by what he is able to capture.”
The string section of the score is performed in a socially distanced space by the BBC Concert Orchestra, and accompanied by Brit and Mercury Award-winning UK rapper Dave, who will be performing on the grand piano.
The rapper said: “This is a programme where nature and music come together, so it was only right that I lent my talent, my time, and my attention to this project.”
Among the Planet Earth II sequences that are featured is lions vs giraffe, which sees a pride of desert lions in Namibia that are so hungry they risk a nail-biting hunt of a giraffe several times their size.
There’s also footage of Andean flamingo in Salar de Atacama, Chile, who perform a stunning dance in the safe refuge of a chain of salt lakes.
We’ll see a mother snow leopard protecting her cub from two males in the Himalayas.
And last but not least, there’s the Bafta-winning racer snakes vs iguana scenes, which sees our plucky hero, a hatchling marine iguana, sprint across the beach followed by a hunting mob of racer snakes.
From Blue Planet II we will once again witness the charming surfing bottlenose dolphins off South Africa.
There’s also common octopus vs pyjama shark in the kelp forests, and bird-eating fish in the Indian Ocean, as giant trevallies propel themselves out of the water to catch sea birds in mid-air.
And finally, we’ll get to relive the gatherings of orca and humpback whales feeding together on herring in the fjords of northern Norway.
The good news for Attenborough fans is that another new five-part BBC series called A Perfect Planet will be hitting our screens this year.
It will explore how weather, oceans, volcanoes and sunlight have shaped the natural world, and how different species adapt to survive and thrive.
Something the evergreen Sir David has mastered during his long and illustrious career.