Blue Planet III

Blue Planet III is another magnificent achievement, a marvel of a series that has been four years and 100 expeditions in the making, and which yielded a remarkable discovery about dolphins.

Within a narrative structure with few variations, the ability of species to be inventive ensures no risk of monotony through repetition. Thus there’s the astonishing prospect of an octopus pursuing its meal by emerging from water and waddling breathlessly across rocks.

Spectacular and moving, a call to action that manages to uplift even amid obvious catastrophe.

If we stop requiring it to be another landmark and appreciate it as just another wildlife series, Blue Planet III is a corker. Its excellence is a bright flash of hopeful defiance, and if it often falls into familiar patterns, that familiarity is a comfort.

If wildlife series, like comedians, sometimes rely on old routines, that’s broadly fine as long as there’s also eye-catching animal behaviour that we haven’t witnessed before, the natural-history equivalent of a world exclusive. There are several in the first episode. .... By the time we reach episode three, the wonders come thick and fast.