Our Planet: Our Eden is in peril, warns a God-like Sir David Attenborough in this Netflix paean to nature

The series is available now on Netflix
Alastair McKay5 April 2019

It is a delicate business, saving the planet. We know this due to the broadcasting of David Attenborough, whose career has spanned the television age.

In his autobiography he sees the flaws in his own work, while embracing technology as it occurs.

As a programme-maker he has gone from black-and-white to colour. As a naturalist he has made programmes that include anthropological excursions into human life, before focusing entirely on animals.

Over the decades he has gone from wondering how he will get rotting goats (to feed Komodo dragons) through on his BBC expenses, to this Netflix series, which has the production values of a Super Bowl commercial, an Ellie Goulding theme tune, and — less audible amid the beauty — a point to make. “What we do in the next 20 years will determine the future for all life on Earth,” he suggests.

Penguins: Our Planet travels to the frozen plains
Silverback/Netflix

Attenborough has been broadcasting about animals since the early Fifties. The impending ecological calamity is not his fault. It’s unrealistic to expect him to use his position as a broadcaster to issue a detailed critique of consumerism, global shipping, or the continued use of fossil fuels. That’s not his job.

But it is worth noting that Attenborough’s place in Our Planet is largely that of a voiceover artist. True, he plays the voice of God, looking down on Earth with wonder and concern, and a note of weariness in his tone. “For generations, this stable Eden nurtured our growing civilisations,” he says. But now: “All that has changed.”

Narrator: Sir David Attenborough  provides the voiceover for Our Planet
Netflix

The photography — the cinemato-graphy — is glorious. It’s hard to think of an image more poignant than that of the doomed flamingo chick on a salt pan falling flat on its face as dusk falls. Technology now allows us to get closer to nature, in higher definition.

Cameras (on drones?) can follow the migration of caribou from the frozen north in a way that was never possible before. You can listen to the snow crunching beneath a polar bear’s foot. You can hear, if you try, Attenborough’s warnings about the fragility of these things; how the caribou train is smaller than it used to be, how the polar bear cubs are underweight.

Sir David Attenborough - In pictures

Investitures at Windsor Castle
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What should we think about this? The music offers a clue. It’s a regrettable fact that wildlife films lost the battle to soundtrack music some time ago, and it may be true that most viewers are relaxed about being aurally manipulated.

Much of the music here is by Steven Price (who soundtracked Gravity) and it is literal-minded. As the wildebeest attack, it’s jaunty and threatening. As the red-capped manakin performs a mating dance, “rocketing from one peach to another”, it’s frisky. As the caribou are tracked over the snow by wolves, it’s choppy and minimalistic. If anything, Price’s voice is more powerful than Attenborough’s.

But still, there’s a punch in the gut. The final episode about forests includes extraordinary footage from Chernobyl, a post-nuclear wasteland where human visitors require protective clothing. The empty buildings, with their stained glass and cosmonaut murals, are haunting. Attenborough, ever understated, appears to be making an argument for the benefits of allowing forests to flourish, because here the trees have taken over. Roe deer, wild horses and wolves roam the abandoned streets.

The resilience of nature is an optimistic thought. For humanity, the apocalyptic sunset arrives as a prophecy.

TV shows to watch in 2019

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Our Planet is available on Netflix now.

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