If you were an animal, what would you be? Maybe you’ve done that, if you’ve got children, or you’re a language teacher teaching second conditionals. I usually go for the obvious – the most similar to me, in looks, movement, character, position on the food chain, politics etc. So black panther, great white shark, king cobra, that kind of thing. I wasn’t familiar with the arctic ground squirrel, but having seen the first episode of Alaska: Earth’s Frozen Kingdom (BBC2), I’m now thinking that being one of them would be excellent.
These adorable little fluffy things don’t just hibernate, they’re asleep for eight months of the year! Winter plays no part in the consciousness of an arctic ground squirrel. They wake up, spring is in the air, they feast, they fight in the snow, they frolick, they make squirrelly love, and even fluffier, more adorable squirrelly babies. Then they go back to sleep again, in their snug burrows, until next year. Isn’t that the perfect existence?
The worst thing to be is a herring, certainly around these parts. They come for the rich nutrients in the water, flushed off the land by the melt water. But with them they bring everything that likes herrings for tea. Sea lions (I could be one of them), then white-sided dolphins that dive-bomb the shoal, mouths agape, thank you. Next herring gulls (there is a clue there), picking the fish off from above, and diving birds snatching from below … that’s just not fair is it, birds from below? The herrings are trapped in a mad swirl of shimmering terror at the surface; it is fish slaughter on a scandalous scale.
Somehow, some (well, billions) make it to the mouths of the rivers. Thank God herring is no longer a fashionable human tea … What, it is in Alaska? Here are spotter planes and an armada of fishing boats, kettling the herrings into their nets. And another armada of humpback whales using a similar technique, but with a net made of bubbles. The result is the same: millions more ex-herrings.
Still, some make it through, to spawn in the shallows. Yay! But then Harvey here, of the Kaagwaantaan clan, shows up with his hemlock branches and ancient rights, to take their eggs. It’s like the whole world is against the herrings. And yet they come back, year after year, so I guess they can take it, and it’s OK.
I like this documentary because it’s not just about the animals, and the plants, and the passing of the seasons; it’s about how all that fits in with the people who live around these parts, battling against the extremes of nature that come with the latitude. However interesting animals are, the interface between them and us usually makes a better story.
I’m also enjoying Dougray Scott’s narration – languid to the point that it sounds like he really doesn’t give a damn about any of this stuff in a cold place, far away. But that’s actually refreshing, when so many actorly narrators now give it the full Rada.
And I like the audacious sperm whales, who have cottoned on to what it is the long-line fishing boats are up to and show up, just as those lines are pulled in. The whale takes the line in its mouth, so it’s then pulled through its teeth like leviathan dental floss. And every time there’s a black cod on the line, the whale simply bites it off and swallows it. Only the black cod: the other fish are let through. Black cod, they’re the really expensive ones, at super flash places like Nobu. These are classy whales. But it’s not so much fun if you’re a black cod fisherman.
The end of The Legacy (Sky Arts 1) has left me bereaved and grieving, appropriately. And perhaps unexpectedly. Who’d have thought it, an arty-farty family squabbling over a will, for 10 hours, in Danish? Without even a murder to cheer it up.
But it’s been utterly absorbing. Because, as we’ve come to expect of television from that part of the world, they’re so very good at characters – complex, flawed, real characters, and the complex, flawed, real relationships between them. Characters and relationships that are allowed time to develop and that aren’t just involving but inevitably lead you to ponder your own family and relationships too.
Chances are you weren’t one of the approximately 11 people watching The Legacy – though those 11 were, I hope, Guardian people at least – so I won’t go into detail. But from next week you can get a box set, and I think you should. Plus it’s got Dennis Bergkamp in it. You’ll see …
