8 reasons why BBC One's Planet Earth II will be the absolute best thing you see on TV this year
Sorry, Game of Thrones. You can't beat Attenborough.
If you only have time to watch one television series in the whole of 2016, you have to make it Planet Earth II.We're just going to leave that sentence hanging there a moment.
The stunning natural history series is back, and believe us when we say that it's so beautiful it actually made us weep a little bit – and not just that, but it is genuinely thrilling, eye-opening and better than most of the action movies released this year. Here are just eight reasons why you should make it your new telly obsession.
1. SIR DAVID ATTENBOROUGH, OBVIOUSLYSir David Attenborough is a complete gift to this nation – and he's back here, narrating Planet Earth II with his trademark mix of knowledge and wonder. The best thing about Sir Attenborough is that he seems just as agape as we are at the amazing footage, and, of course, that his voice is like a warm hot chocolate on a rainy day. Don't expect much of him on screen, though he does pop up at the very start in a hot air balloon, just casually being more of a baller than we will ever manage.
2. THIS SHOW WAS RIDICULOUSLY DIFFICULT TO MAKEIf anything justifies the licence fee, it's Planet Earth II – we cannot imagine any other broadcaster going to these lengths to make a show. In fact, the crew undertook 117 filming trips over 2,089 shooting days in 40 different countries (episode one alone features nine different locations, from Panama to Hawaii to Madagascar to New Zealand). And so much planning went into it all – it took nine months just to get permission to film peregrine falcons in New York.
We'll get a bit of insight into all of this as the episodes each feature a "making of" segment at the end, so you can marvel at, say, the trip to Zavodovsi Island in Antarctica to film chinstrap penguins – it took a year of planning and in the six-week expedition the crew camped out on the island (accessible only by horrendously rocky cliff-faces) fearing that they may not be able to get off again as storms raged. Gulp.
That's a bit of a theme, actually. In the Grasslands episode, the crew camped out in the Okavango Delta for five months over two years to see swamp lions taking on Cape buffalo and got bogged in, cut to shreds by swordgrass and eaten by mosquitos, all the while fearing they were about to get attacked by crocodiles.
The crew also faced challenges including food poisoning, mountain sickness and even – for producer Emma Napper – rats eating through their underwear. The least you could do is tune in to make their sacrifices worth it.
3. IT'S SCORED BY NONE OTHER THAN HANS ZIMMERYes, that Hans Zimmer, the Oscar-winning composer who wrote the music for more than 120 movies including The Dark Knight, Gladiator, The Lion King, Inception and Pirates of the Caribbean. His music runs throughout Planet Earth II and makes it even more cinematic – whether that's getting your heart racing or making you giggle. Pure quality.
4. EACH EPISODE FOCUSES ON A DIFFERENT HABITAT… INCLUDING CITIESOver the course of the show, we'll visit islands, mountains, jungles, deserts, grasslands and cities (yep, really). "We wanted to acknowledge that the world wasn't all jungles, deserts and mountains anymore," explained series producer Tom Hugh-Jones.
"At the same time, we didn't want the cities programme to feel grey and boring compared to the other episodes – we were determined that it would be a beautiful film in its own right and determined to show animals surviving in remarkable ways, rather than it just being full of doom and gloom and lamenting how things used to be." So expect to see creatures like leopards, falcons, beautiful flocks of starlings and, brilliantly, monkeys stealing juice bottles.
5. THE FILMING TECHNOLOGY IS ABSOLUTELY MIND-BLOWINGLet's make this clear: if you watch Planet Earth II on your mobile during your commute, you're doing it wrong. Find the biggest telly you can (heck, stand in Currys if you have to) because this show is seriously cinematic. If you've got a pretty impressive tech set-up, by the way, Planet Earth II happens to be one of the first series to air in full UHD and HDR. We have it on good authority that this is a very good thing.
But if tech isn't really your bag, just know this – it makes it all look absolutely stunning, from the juicy goblets of saliva drooping from a lumbering Komodo dragon to droplets of water falling from a sloth who's just been for a swim. And all these advances also get us closer to the animals than ever before, thanks to everything from drones to low-light cameras and remotely operated cameras triggered by animals who would never get that near to humans.
You can see that with the snow leopards in the Mountains episode – for the first time, four were captured on camera together (there are only 3,500 left in the wild).
Sometimes, though, tech can only do so much and you have to figure out other ways of getting your shots. So with golden eagles, the team didn't only strap a 4k camera to one of their backs to actually get a literal birds' eye view, but they also worked with a paragliding world champion who was rigged with cameras and flew down a mountain, going tandem with a cameraman (who screamed the whole way, apparently – bless).
6. YOU WILL GET SO INVOLVED WITH THE ANIMALS' STORIESGet ready to aww, shriek and gasp. Bores will tell you that you shouldn't anthropomorphise animals, but don't listen to them – it's so easy to get involved in their stories. From the sloth looking for love and the albatross waiting patiently for their mate to return, to the chinstrap penguins getting bloody, bruised and dazed on their mission to get food for their young, it's more dramatic than Game of Thrones.
One particular highlight from the first episode sees baby marine iguanas making a break for the sea, only to be chased by snakes upon snakes upon snakes. It's completely compelling, with the producers comparing it to Indiana Jones or a "horror film" ("I spent half the shoot with my hands in front of my eyes willing the poor hatchlings to escape," admitted producer Elizabeth White, while apparently even Sir David was shocked by the footage).
But there are funny moments to come too – like the grizzly bears having a good-old back scratch on trees "like crazy pole dancers", as the BBC put it.
7. AND YES, IT'S NATURE RED IN TOOTH AND CLAWAs always with the BBC's natural history documentaries, don't expect this to be a completely sunny look at nature. The darker side is in there – we'll just point you to those poor chinstrap penguins, who go on a daily mission to find food and get battered and injured by high waves and those rocky cliffs.
And then there are the Komodo dragons. Wait until you've seen them battle or rip apart an unlucky deer and you'll realise that The Walking Dead's Negan has absolutely nothing on them. In fact, those Komodo dragons were so dangerous that six rangers joined the crew (though they were armed only with sticks to keep the beasts at a distance).
8. YOU WILL GENUINELY SEE THINGS YOU HAVE NEVER SEEN ON TELEVISION BEFORETom Hugh-Jones explains that making the show involved the "relentless pursuit of originality", adding: "Every time we embark on one of these wildlife blockbusters, we want to show something completely fresh, or at least reveal more familiar stories in a new light. It's our mission to wow people with things they didn't know about the natural world."
Well, get ready to be wowed – there are things in there you can't possibly expect. We get the first glimpse of the Araguaia dolphin in the wild (they were only discovered in 2014). Then there's the tiny golden mole the size of a ping-pong ball, and the swarm of a billion locusts – a 300-square-kilometre swarm, the likes of which might only be seen once a decade.
There's the long-eared bat caught on camera for the first time hunting death stalker scorpions, and we even get a new insight into animals we all know, as a special macro crane-arm follows a tiny mouse into its "tree-house" nest with a never-before-seen look at tiny newborn baby mice.
Oh, and then there are all the bits that sound like Sharknado rip-offs: things like red crabs vs yellow crazy ants, or ninja frogs fighting huge wasps. Strap yourselves in – it's going to be quite a ride.
Planet Earth II begins on Sunday (November 6) at 8pm on BBC One.
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