A Perfect Planet

It was stunning though, wasn't it? The flamingo migration scenes alone were a work of art; shown from above they looked like the whirl on top of a latte. Quite magnificent. Breathtaking also were the vampire finches that seemed to have conned boobies into believing that when they suck their blood they are doing them a favour.

The quality of the photography was so exquisite, and the narration so spare and intelligent, that it was still required viewing. And the perspective of this series was something new. It explores the great forces of nature that enable life on Earth.

The cinematography is as awesome in scale and majesty as anything that has gone before, capturing both vast panoramas of tropical atolls and the tiniest wrinkly detail of a giant tortoise’s backside. The theme of the series is clever and novel, each episode analysing one of the great forces of nature that have created “the only planet in the universe, so far as we know, where there is life” – the sun, weather, oceans and so on.