Photograph: BBC/Terry Andrewartha/naturepl.com
Even without the controversy generated by producer Alistair Fothergill's dissing of Steve Irwin, there was no shortage of attention for Planet Earth's latest series, which started Sunday on BBC1. And across the board, critics found that Sir David Attenborough and co lived up to expectations as they explored the impact of global warming on polar bears, penguins and the odd skua.
Caitlin Moran, writing in the Times, was entranced by the Poles - "a world of sinuous monochromes, ice cathedrals, shifting stars and magnetic flux. By comparison, any big sci-fi movies look paltry and flat." The Daily Record admired, amid Attenborough's saucy footage of mating penguins, how "ultra-high speed cameras capture great white sharks taking their seal prey and crocodiles grabbing wildebeest". The Independent's Thomas Sutcliffe hailed, "a chain of astonishingly beautiful sights - unfamiliar objects filmed from unfamiliar angles" with "a new strain of mortality to the way in which they were put together."
David Belcher, for the Herald, swiftly tired of the endless "whitescape" and started to grumble, "You can't have a nature show about the polar extremes without penguins! Show us the ruddy penguins!" But he cheered up rapidly. "Thankfully, at two minutes and 38 seconds, there they were. Penguins! Tubby little blighters in tight-fitting tuxedos toboganning gravely downhill on their stomachs; critters as hilariously stone-faced as Buster Keaton, as flat-footed as Charlie Chaplin, waddling around with their little arms stiffly extended in indignation!"
The penguins gave way to extended footage of the exhausted death of a polar bear, unable to hunt across the melted ice sheets and left too weak after two days of swimming to successfully attack a walrus. For Sutcliffe, this sequence cemented the series as "a stunning record of what we will have lost. But it's a very cold sort of comfort." The Guardian's Nancy Banks-Smith pondered, "You do feel the crew could have chucked it a kipper. As global warming has already disturbed the balance of nature, it may be time to rewrite the rule that natural history programmes can observe but must never interfere."
Either way, the scenes made their point for the Mail on Sunday's Steve Hendry, who hailed Planet Earth as "the one reality TV show no one can screw their nose up at". Moran was left with "a sense of terrible sorrow and panic", only enhanced by Attenborough's "low, sad voice like Aslan's". It was left to Belcher to dismiss them as completing "all the ingredients for a winning telly nature show".
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