Planet Earth III, BBC One, review: The closest David Attenborough ...

Planet Earth III was always going to be spectacular, eye-opening, awe-inspiring and other such epithets. The Natural History Unit is still one of the biggest jewels in the BBC’s tarnished crown. And what more can be said about Sir David Attenborough?

The question, however, was this. Nearly 20 years after the original Planet Earth blockbuster, and seven years after its sequel, Planet Earth II, what would differentiate this latest series from its predecessors?

We’re pretty blasé now about such painstaking filmmaking (this new series was five years in the making) as well as the technological advancements that make it possible. It’s going to take quite a lot to astonish us anew.

The answer is partly in its attitude. In the years since Planet Earth II, Attenborough has become increasingly vocal about the climate crisis and other eco-threats. And while the presenter still wants to remain more hopeful than alarmist, the new series is perhaps the nearest that the 97-year-old has come to throwing up his hands in despair. “Life is adaptable,” he said at the end of the opening episode. “But is there a limit to how fast it can do so?”

The devastating sequences that preceded his question suggested that there might indeed be a limit. Flamingos on the Yucatán coast of Mexico, for example, saw a generation of their newly hatched babies wiped out in a violent storm surge (these particular storms are arriving earlier and more violently thanks to global warming).

And then there was Raine Island, a tiny mound of sand-topped coral reef off the coast of Australia, where half of all green turtles in the Pacific come to lay their eggs. If sea levels rise as predicted, Raine Island will disappear beneath the waves by 2050.

Another novelty arrived in the now traditional “how we made it” postscript, as the filmmakers were shown freeing turtles trapped in the rocks. Such human intervention in natural world struggles has hitherto been considered a no-no for wildlife TV crews. It felt good to see these Olympian attitudes being disregarded.

But the series began in a more comfortingly familiar setting, with Attenborough strolling the same bucolic English downland where Charles Darwin pondered his ideas on evolution. Each of the eight episodes focuses on how different environments are faring since Darwin’s day, starting with coasts. This is the “frontline” in climate change, said the presenter.

For those simply wanting to watch wildlife up to new tricks, there was plenty of that too. Take the seals of South Africa’s Robberg Peninsula, who gang up to ward off hungry sharks. Or the desert lions of Namibia’s Skeleton Coast, night-vision cameras capturing them hunting seabirds. “These roosting cormorants are sitting ducks,” as Attenborough put it.

And as for “sea angels”, the translucent orange Arctic Sea creatures really do look like angels, or, at any rate, Christmas tree bauble angels. Their appearance, however, belies a devilish critter who would be a shoo-in for a future Doctor Who monster. They catch passing “sea butterflies” (not as pretty as their name; imagine a snail with wings) by inverting their mouth parts to form a deadly trap. It was weirdly disturbing.

There were also snakes that catch fish, and fish that snare insects perched on trees by spitting water at them. Attenborough’s voice took on the comedic tones of Animal Magic’s Johnny Morris as he described these Indonesian “archer fish”.

Altogether, it was heartening to realise that there is still so much nature out there to discover – even if the underlying message seemed to be “catch it while you can”.