Blue Planet II

One of the best things that can happen on telly is that David Attenborough will get wheeled out to narrate the most epically beautiful photography of Earth’s wildlife.  The BBC is currently showing a second series of The Blue Planet, following on from its 2001 predecessor with more fish, whales, corals and, er, Bobbit worms.  We’ve only waited sixteen years, but it’s been worth it.

There is no classier and more dignified voice than Attenborough’s.  He can make anything sound majestic and significant.  Imagine watching the dustmen coming down the road with a David voiceover: wheelie bins being emptied into rubbish trucks would take on a poetic beauty.  All the groupers he has watched being eaten in this current series must be so proud that their deaths in the mouths of reef sharks have been marked with a couple of dramatic sentences from this absolute idol of TV.  Surely the life goal of any animal is for their demise to feature in a BBC documentary voiced by Attenborough?

If this is what the license fee pays for, then the BBC are welcome to my money.  We pay about £9.99 a month for Netflix subscriptions just to watch old series of Teen Wolf and documentaries about prisons (just me?) – although I’m luckily able to surf a friend’s account and am therefore not paying anything (even though they keep putting the subtitles on and they’re in no way hearing impaired). 

Indeed, obtaining the awesome footage we expect can’t be cheap.  But then, at the end of each show, they explain to us how they got some of the most impressive shots.  I feel I would always rather be left wondering how on earth they have managed to film Bobbit worms ambushing fish.  There’s something nice about it being a mystery.  The explanation inevitably involves a whole load of people spending months and months in some awful place, all for a few minutes of footage.  Some poor cameraman probably didn’t see his kids or another living soul for months while looking for a little crab.  It feels like a waste of time and money, especially as I was probably whatsapping someone while it was onscreen. 

The magic also evaporates slightly when every episode comes back around to some sort of environmental guilt.  Cue image of a baby turtle wearing some sort of plastic neckpiece and looking forlorn.  It’s of course right that we must be shown this, but it takes the edge off the escapism the show otherwise provides.  Luckily, being told off by David Attenborough takes on an almost seductive element.  You feel very naughty and instinctively vow never to use another plastic product again.

And it’s that escapism that makes it perfect Sunday evening viewing (the main part of the show, I mean, before the environmental slapped wrist – I normally stop watching before it comes on).  Although, Blue Planet II can also be saved for a Monday night, when the shock of a new week and its first day hit home.  For some reason, Monday is always the most aggressive of all the commutes, but it can be washed away in a visual sea of lantern fish as they’re devoured shoal by shoal.  It might have been busy on the Tube and someone might have shoved you at Stockwell, but at least there weren’t five different types of predator racing to eat you and everyone you know.

That said, at the risk of great unpopularity, I have to confess to finding this new series slightly repetitive.  I’m sure most things were covered last time around.  There’s always a shoal being finished off in a feeding frenzy.  There’s always Attenborough explaining where nutrients are in the water due to various currents, enunciating the word nutrients until it becomes almost sexual.  Nutrientsss.  Each scene opens with some sort of curious image.  Shot after shot shows variations on the same thing as we are led to wonder what on earth this will be.  Is that a sperm whale?  Upside down?  I don’t know.  Maybe David will explain in a minute.  The problem is, that minute takes so long to come that it feels like padding.  The old confuse ‘n’ reveal ends up getting overused if it’s what frames every sequence.  I know I said I liked the mystery of not knowing how things were filmed, but I just want the straight-up facts about which animals I am watching straightaway.

But these concerns are minor.  This is must-watch TV.  There might be no snake island this time, which was YouTubed the Monday after broadcast over and over, but the drama of the real-life battles for survival that dominate the animal world easily outdo anything scripted and greenlit by Netflix.  And if you happen to be watching it in the nineties, there’s a factsheet to accompany the series, as Attenborough explains at the end of each episode.  You just have to phone up for it (again, in the nineties).  I hope Dave answers the phone.