Planet Earth II is a six-part British nature documentary from the BBC, but only considering it as such would be as inadequate as calling the pack-hunting snakes of the Galapagos Islands that swarm around the hatchling iguana population “mildly threatening”. The show is a crowning achievement, featuring the combined efforts of narrator Sir David Attenborough and some of the most miraculous camera work (in 4K UHD) that has taken years to assemble (from 400 terabytes of footage). So, expecting the documentary to only be covering the same ground as any other nature doc would require the same gross underestimation as made by a pride of lions when chasing a giraffe in the Namib Desert, or the city pigeons of Albi, France, when a Wels catfish slowly sidles up next to them. In nature, fish eat birds, frogs kick wasps, leopards hunt pigs in Mumbai, and sloths swim for sex; Planet Earth II is as close to the fantastic beasts and bugs of this world as we have ever been, although 1.5 million penguins are pretty hard to miss.
This 200 word capsule review is published at PopMatters.com, where you can read the rest of the feature for free.
Carl Wilson 