It can be safely said that the gold standard for nature documentaries rests with the BBC’s Natural History Unit and it’s rightly-revered longtime presenter and narrator Sir David Attenborough.
Time and again the Natural History Unit and Attenborough have demonstrated a fierce and palpable enthusiasm for the natural world and for ensuring that it’s made accessible to the widest audience possible.
In a time when climate change, deforestation and the potential loss of biodiversity on the planet have reached critical mass – so desperate is the plight of many animals and planets that some scientists have dubbed the current age as the Anthropocene, the sixth great wave of extinction but this time driven by humanity itself – their work is more important than ever.
And so it is than after four years of filming in more than 64 countries, the BBC has unveiled the trailer for Planet Earth II which Attenborough promises in his unmissable dulcet tones will illuminate the Earth as never before.
While an actual release date hasn’t been provided yet, we can only hope we don’t have to wait too long for the six-part series (each episode is one hour long) because the material on the trailer, which is just a snapshot of what is to come and uses Sigur Ros’ “Hoppipolla”, is breathtakingly beautiful, filmed using Ultra High Definition
The BBC promises that the new series, which comes a decade after the groundbreaking Planet Earth which radically redefined what we could expect from a nature documentary, will “take the audience closer to nature and allow [us] to experience the wilderness as if [we] were there.”
It’s an enticing promise and one which I, as a long time advocate for the natural world and documentary-enthusiast, cannot wait to experience.