With Blue Planet II, Sir David Attenborough captivated audiences once again and helped the BBC grab more viewers than Strictly, Simon Cowell doling out stink or indeed any other TV show in the UK. And all with the magic of the natural world.
Four years in the making, and 16 years on from his original series, this latest seven-episode tour of the oceans came complete with a portentous soundtrack from composer Hans Zimmer and Radiohead, plus specially curated playlists and an excellent accompanying podcast. It also served as a reminder of the danger that our fragile world is in. “We’ve also recognised an uncomfortable fact,” said Attenborough. “[The oceans are] changing at a faster rate than ever before in human history.”
And so to the aesthetically marvellous but often wounding series that allowed critics and audiences alike to both marvel and think. Down on the Great Barrier Reef a tuskfish persevered to crack open a clam, doing great PR for a species often thought dim. Elsewhere, distinctively bump-headed Asian Sheepshead Wrasse changed from female to male (“transgender fish!” screamed the Daily Mail, who hadn’t fully got it). Giant trevally leapt out of the water in the Seychelles to grab birds flying by, both predatory and precise. Everything looked so vivid, so CGI-ed. But no – everything was real, even the wrasse that had an undeniable “Doctor Who baddie” air to them.
Each episode offered something improbable; even down in what Attenborough called the twilight zone of the Antarctic Ocean – the real deep – there were strange and beguiling creatures, like a pyrosome (a piece of jelly masquerading as a worm, or maybe the other way around) and barreleye, a type of fish which looked up through its transparent skull.
And, along the way, we also saw the damage humans have wreaked on the world. “Is there any future for this most precious of ocean treasures?” asked Attenborough, corals looking worse for wear as a plastic bottle sailed by, as incongruous as a digital watch in Ben Hur.
There’s hope for regeneration, but the message from Blue Planet II was clear – this is all our doing. When we found out that a pilot whale had been unable to leave her dead baby’s side for days, the cause of its death possibly contamination-related, it was hard not to feel a pang of guilt.
Yet for all of its enviro-realism, Blue Planet II excelled in reminding us just how amazing our world is, and the lengths that the BBC’s Natural History Unit, and its hardworking crews, will go to bring us the best nature docs on the planet. This often involves putting themselves into incredibly dangerous situations, like when producer Orla Doherty, who spent more than 500 hours in the ocean for the programme, recalled her submarine filling up with water in episode two.
As the series concludes on Sunday, there’s another sad tale of albatrosses and dolphins inadvertently poisoning their young. But there is also much hope. And, ultimately, that is what Blue Planet II has given us: oceans, oddities, and a touch of optimism.
