(courtesy IMP Awards)
Back in a far more innocent time, watching nature documentaries was simply a matter of sitting back and letting the splendour of the natural world wash over you.
Not a mention was made, and honestly maybe it should have been, of the fact that humanity was trashing nature with thoughtlessly exploitative abandon and that until we ceased using it as some sort of civilisation-building larder, all the majesty and beauty before us would be no more.
We were emotionally invested, yes; how could you not be when a zebra foal was galloping for her young life from a super-fast cheetah, and even though at the back of your mind, you knew that was nature did its thing, you wanted her to outsprint the predator and make her way back across the Serengeti grasslands to her fretting mum.
That was then, and this is now, and in Our Planet II we are reminded that while whether a fledgling Laysan Albatross successfully flies high enough to evade waiting tiger sharks circling the atoll it has temporarily called home matters – to us as an audience; nature likely views it as so much BAU – it doesn’t even come close to the fact that way before a seaborn predator can get its teeth into the fledgling, that it has a better-than-average chance of dying from plastic ingestion.
We have pumped so much of the stuff into the oceans that even this atoll north of Hawai’i in the remote north Pacific Ocean is crammed to the suffocated gills with it, meaning that well-meaning parent albatrosses are inadvertently feeding their chicks something that will eventually kill them.
It’s horrifying to watch an albatross dying on the sand from too much plastic in its gut – it essentially starves to death even as its parents feed it – or to watch a mother walrus trying to find safety and fellow walruses to mind her newborn calf while she goes hunting for food, but being stymied by the fact the amount of sea ice has declined so much that soon she won’t have anywhere to call home.
So, in watching the David Attenborough-voiced Our Planet II we are confronted with the damage we are doing to this stunning one-of-a-kind world of ours even as we are treated to landscapes and animals so arrestingly wondrous that its humbling to think we share the earth with creatures this complex and beautiful.
The thing is, not one bit of the wonder or grandeur is lost by the sage insertion of these warnings about the great harm we are doing to our fellow living things; if anything, it’s worth and value is enhanced as we contemplate what an awful world it would be if we couldn’t share it wit pronghorn sheep or grey whales or snow goose migrating north by the million.
Watching all of these animals migrate, using the magnetic shield that encircles the earth, is stunningly engrossing not simply because of the sheer scale and number of the animals in play – you can help but be astonished by hundreds of thousands of wildebeests and zebra roaming in search of grass and water or snow geese seemingly without number rising into the air – but because it underscores how marvellously complex the world is.
Here we have sockeye salmon who can recognise the taste of the water in the river in which they were spawned, or Ancient Murrulet chicks in Canada’s British Columbia instinctively knowing they must leave their island burrows for a life at sea with their mothers and it’s staggering how all of these creatures manage to cross such vast distances without ever having done it before.
The sheer thrill of watching animals navigate ancient migration paths, complicated once again by humanity destroying nurturing environments or throwing fences up where once there were none, is enhanced by impressive camera work and inventive use of new technologies such as drones which mimic what it is like for a bee seeking out a new hollow in which to establish a new colony.
Or take us down into the water with whales diving deep under the ice or onto the Andean mountain ranges where pumas wrestle a guanaco to the ground with a ferocious tenacity.
These events would be beguiling no matter what but the dedication to find new and immersive ways to take us into the heart of the action is impressive and you can only hope that seeing animals so in depth and personal might spur more people to take active steps to protect them.
Our Planet II isn’t completely bereft of notes of encouragement, pointing out that many people will look after animals with real care and compassion, especially when they are dispossessed from their ancestral lands as some elephants in China, who set out on a 1000lm odyssey to find a new home when their jungle home is ravaged by drought, are.
It’s not all bad news but there is enough of it, such that we should watch a series like Our Planet II with one eye on the wonder and the other on how badly we are trashing it and what must be done to stop it or, at the very least mitigate the effects.
The only downside to the series, and honestly it’s a minor one for a series that has beautiful camerawork, Attenborough’s narration and an expertly explored theme of migration and having room to move to its superlative credit, is the way it ends each episode with a clickbait/cliffhanger ending.
Will the Laysan Albatross manage to evade the tiger sharks? Can the zebra foal make it across the Mara River in Tanzania? WHAT WILL HAPPEN?!
It’s not a deal breaker but it’s not really needed either, since the story of nature Our Planet II is telling is arresting enough as it is; still, with so much wonder and majesty, and some salutary lessons on why preserving all this rich and beautifully complex must be priority of the highest order, you are content to let it slide, basking in yet another triumphant achievement in nature documentary making that enthralls, instructs and ultimately leave you lost in wonder at the superbly wondrous natural world around you.
Our Planet II is currently streaming on Netflix.
Go behind the scenes and see how they made all that documentary magic …