We're at a unique stage in our history

Continuing my trip down The Guardian's Top 50 TV Shows of 2022.  

#33 : Blue Planet II

It’s no bad thing that you know exactly what you’re getting with a David Attenborough series: whether that’s sobbing as a grizzly bear chases a muskox calf that’s lost its parents, or marvelling at a Lapland bumblebee using her furry body to rebuild her colony. This time, however, there was a stronger urgency in its message about how the climate crisis is destroying these animals’ existence, as we saw a starving polar bear that couldn’t hunt seals because of the melting ice.


As The Guardian puts it "you know exactly what you're getting" - so what exactly am I going to manage to find to say about this?

Well - having watched it, I'm not sure.  It delivers exactly what you'd expect - fantastic looking visuals (and the obligatory fake peril - "oh no, the clown fish is going to get eaten!") to distract you from David giving you a wealth of natural and environmental facts.  I mean, they really are fantastically gorgeous visuals - who really cares that the planet is dying when it looks this good?

To be fair to the program, they do up the environmental message in this series but I have a suspicion that it's preaching to the converted.  I also wonder how many people watch the last ten minute "this is how we did it" section - I find them relatively interesting (and it's amazing how long they spend on something that occupies ten minutes of screen time) but even I can't claim to watch them all.

And well - I think that's all I really have to say on this.  If you're going to watch this, you've probably already done so (and hopefully on a very big telly) and if you're not going to watch this, then it's not worth either of us spending our time on me trying to convince you to do so.  And yes, it's on iPlayer and will probably be there until the heat death of the sun (and I won't be surprised if David's still around to make a beautiful documentary about that when it happens).

#31 - Enjoyably bonkers
#34 - Interesting but over-extended

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