Critic Reviews

A worthy successor to the original, Blue Planet II also brings an urgent environmental warning that the first lacked: It demonstrates that the seas are in trouble and that the world must act.

There really cannot be enough praise for the series, which knows how important it is to engage viewers on both an emotional and intellectual level. The results are a riveting, often heartbreaking look at both the strength and fragility of the world’s oceans.

Its message, and the methods it employs to deliver it, makes this the most important television on right now.

Blue Planet II is jaw-dropping. ... Instead of simply exhorting the Right Thing to Do, the show strives to create the awe and interest required to not just care about the fate of the world’s oceans, but to grow to love them, too. It’s working.

It's a visually astonishing and riveting seven-part collection of images so surreal they almost feel like science fiction. ... Something like this doesn't happen overnight or come around very often. This is television as an educating device for the globe.

The seven-episode series flexes its broadcaster’s mastery of a genre that it created. Over excellent footage shot on a circumglobal photo safari, the venerable narrator David Attenborough orates zoological narratives as if delivering a state-of-nature address.

Blue Planet II will be one of your favorite TV events of the year, and its deep dive beneath the waves of the world’s oceans will prove both soothing and engaging.