Our Planet II TV review — the breathtaking nature doc returns

Netflix’s prestige, David Attenborough-narrated nature documentary series Our Planet returns after four years with more breathtaking footage of the world’s zoological marvels and further blood-boiling evidence of its continuing man-made decay.

Although the effects of climate change and ecological degradation are noted throughout, the prevailing theme of this slightly truncated, yet pleasingly trunk-filled instalment of four episodes is migration. “All life on Earth depends on the freedom to move,” says Attenborough in an introductory spiel that will inevitably be interpreted (approvingly or not) by some as a pointed political statement. He isn’t on the BBC, after all.

As a big-budget Netflix title, it’s able to call on an impressively exhaustive cast (from ants to zebras), boast an array of locations (dense forests to scorched deserts) and regale us with storytelling which straddles a range of genres (from elephantine family sagas to grisly thrillers and fuzzy, feel-good romps). Scenes involving a sky-blocking swarm of locusts (less migratory than Exodus-y) and a crab that devours its young more greedily than Goya’s Saturn, meanwhile, are the stuff of genuine horror. 

Life as captured here is often nasty and brutish, but it is also exquisitely shot. No matter how familiar we are with the formats and formulas of these documentaries — there are all the usual stylised slow-mos, and neat, cinematic editing — it is hard not to feel mesmerised anew by the vital and varied splendour of the world. Or to be hypnotised by Attenborough’s warm, soothing tones.

There are times, however, when the narration can feel a little too gentle, a little too oblique for an urgent focus on environmental crises. But images speak louder than words, of course, and what begins, for instance, as a playful segment about a grounded albatross chick quickly turns into a sobering indictment of us humans as the camera pans out to reveal a beach carpeted in non-degradable waste. Later we see Arctic walruses warring over the last unmelted ice floe. This may be our planet, but images such as these compel us to remember that it is not only ours.

★★★★☆

On Netflix from June 14

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