Click here to read this review on The Oxford Blue online, with beautiful illustrations by Alicia Hayden.
Despite being a longstanding fan of anything Attenborough, I have lately come to view the announcement of a new series with some trepidation. Gone are the days when the environmental stakes were a seabird covered in oil, or a dolphin choking on litter: we are now being warned of an urgent existential threat to life as we know it, and naturally, like many people, this fills me with fear, guilt, and a strong desire to look away.
If you’re like me, then I’m afraid to say the latest BBC series is no exception. Each of the first four episodes of A Perfect Planet devotes substantial attention to the climate crisis, with the fifth and final episode dedicated entirely to this subject, and bringing in three independent climate experts for a more serious, educational tone. It’s not just doom and gloom, though; the effect is not simply to terrify, but to provide detailed information and realistic hope.
Attenborough’s series with the BBC never fail to deliver stunning footage of the natural world. Since this often doesn’t come with an in-built narrative, one challenge in building a TV series seems to be finding some sort of ‘hook’, some way of organising the material so that it tells a fresh and original story. Many previous series organise themselves continent by continent, or ecosystem by ecosystem, but we’ve also had more unusual offerings in recent years- The Hunt, with its focus on predator-prey dynamics, and Dynasties, which zooms in on the family life of one species each episode. A Perfect Planet takes the opposite approach, zooming back out to look at the inorganic features that conspire to make our Goldilocks planet uniquely hospitable to life.
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Endless Forms Most Wonderful 