Planet Earth II has been a triumph. More people tuned in to last night’s sixth and last episode than watched the X Factor final on ITV an hour later. Occasionally, the series strayed into the anthropomorphic, but it was endlessly surprising, often astonishing, as technological advance brought intimacy to the struggle for life. Heartstopping sequences were cut as drama. Viewers wept for the iguana that lost against the racer snakes and the turtle hatchlings misled by artificial light into a busy Barbados road. The last episode revealed how in some of the world’s busiest urban areas the relationship between man and nature is being reversed. City life hones wits and the most successful animals – like the Hanuman langurs in Jodhpur in northern India – that have migrated from their remote jungles are exploiting man as a wasteful consumer, thieving and charming their way to unprecedented levels of fertility. But what really marked out this series was the great Sir David Attenborough’s willingness to remind the viewers of the consequences of our greed and selfishness for the rest of our planet’s life. If only he had been more confrontational. We are wrecking the planet, and as Sir David said as he wrapped what must be almost his last television series, it is up to us, and only us, to stop it.
