In times as divisive as these, few truly unifying figures remain.
David Attenborough is one of those few. As Blue Planet II hits television screens, Attenborough has entered his 91st year of existence. He has been making programmes since the 1950s, best known for his landmark BBC natural history documentaries. For as long as anyone can remember, he has been more than a household name; David Attenborough is a living icon.
Unlike fellow living icons – Morrissey, McCartney, Moss, to name three that happen to begin with M – Attenborough’s work has only vitalised with time. Planet Earth II was a sensation, permeating popular culture in ways few other shows have and attracting record viewing figures.
But while shows like Game of Thrones and Stranger Things rivet us through fiction, the mesmeric reality of life on earth captures our attention like nothing else. Perhaps one reason why: a study from the University of California, Berkley found that connecting with nature makes us happy and benefits our well-being. And doesn’t it just?
There are so many reasons to feel joy when watching David Attenborough’s programmes, Blue Planet II among them. From the opening shot of a wave – a slow-motion image that beggars belief, a towering, grey Matterhorn that somehow ripples like silk – you’re struck twice: once by the glory of nature, and again by our mastery of technology so that we may capture said glory.
Our oceans are wide, deep and dark. Every time we dive down beneath the waves, we learn a little more, but there’s so much we still don’t understand, because we simply don’t know about it. It’s an unexplored alien world, right here on our home planet. But as technology advances, so does our ability to explore and examine, to record and understand.
The BBC’s Natural History Unit has developed a reputation for being at the cutting edge of camera technology, and in Blue Planet IIÂ the bar is raised again. Filming in water is already fraught with issues, but capturing these extraordinary images in any environment, let alone one as unforgiving to both man and machine as the open ocean, is staggering.
And the scenes life captured in Blue Planet II are as poignant, bizarre, funny and beautiful as anything we’ve seen in Attenborough’s oeuvre so far. As with Planet Earth II, the character vignettes are wonderful. Though it’s hard to imagine anything living up to the drama of the iguana and the snakes, the first episode of Blue Planet II has its moments.
A valiant fish smashing and smashing and smashing a shellfish against a rock, trying to crack its armour to get at its tasty insides, using tools to get what it needs. Dolphins, famously a species with intelligence beyond that of most of the animal kingdom, surfing through the rip curl for no other reason than that they apparently enjoy it.
It’s impossible not to watch with wide-eyed awe when a fish – a fish that can calculate the speed and velocity of birds flying overheard – launches out of the water and catches one in its mouth. This is nature – it’s real and it’s here and it’s flawless and it’s amazing.
But nature is also fragile. A sequence where walruses struggle to find a safe place on a crowded chunk of rapidly-melting ice is a life-or-death example of the way humanity is detrimentally impacting the natural world year-on-year. Though Blue Planet II is a beautiful portrait of animals and environment, it’s also a warning that, if we keep going the way we are, all of this is in jeopardy.
The job of these programmes is not to preach, but to inspire. The great power of Attenborough’s programmes is that they are levellers. People of all ages, from all walks of life, from countries all around the world, can all be equally awestruck; adults and children held in the same spellbound state of wonder. No one is excluded from these shows. They are for all.
So we can feel happy that these programmes exist, that David Attenborough exists, that at 91 years of age he shows no signs of slowing down, that we as humans have the capability and conscience to make things like Blue Planet II, that the weird and wonderful creatures on our screen are real and exist for no reason other than to exist.
Life, in a word, is good.
