Watching time-lapse technology accelerate a tree’s several-year journey from roots to heavens, or its attritional destruction by leafcutter ants, we might find ourselves thinking of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s reflection that “nought may endure but mutability”. Well, nought but mutability and David Attenborough.
The indefatigable 95-year-old has now been presenting prestige nature documentaries for more than two-thirds of the BBC’s century of broadcasting. His latest, The Green Planet, is yet another remarkable product of the symbiosis between his decades of experience and ingenious, cutting-edge filming techniques.
In recent years his presence in these shows has largely been akin to that of a quasi-deity — a near-omniscient voice that looks on at Earth’s wonders and confirms that it is indeed good. But here, Attenborough can actually be found in his element, on location and at one with his environment. The radiant expression of childlike glee when he comes face to face with a bat — an animal that could really do with some positive press these days — touchingly affirms that his sense of awe and curiosity have not been even slightly diminished by time or familiarity.
As the title suggests, it is flora, not fauna, which serves as the main focus of this new five-part series that promises to show us plants “from their perspective”, using (often quite literally) groundbreaking technology to capture subterranean microcosms and sweeping aerial vistas.
But the success of these documentaries is not just built on incredible visuals or Attenborough’s warm, wise voice-overs. They also tend to trade on a keen affinity for storytelling, as relatable human values, personalities and motivations are ascribed to animals operating on pure biological instinct, while shrewd editing cultivates tension and jeopardy.
To create a compelling plot and elicit empathy from footage of an “innocent” baby iguana fleeing from a nest of “evil” serpents is one thing, to do it with faceless flowers and fungi is another challenge entirely — one that The Green Planet gladly rises to.
This first episode takes us into the depths of the world’s rainforests which Attenborough describes as “battlefields”. Numerous gripping sequences of verdant violence — tree shoots strangling rivals, plants devouring unsuspecting animals, trees poisoning their insect pillagers — leave us fully convinced of the analogy long before we see hundreds of propellered seedlings rain down on the landscape like the fleet of helicopters in Apocalypse Now.
Elsewhere, one particularly fascinating, bewildering segment sees millions of ants toiling in serfdom to feed a giant underground fungus overlord. It plays out like a fever dream by Hayao Miyazaki translated into hyperreality through some exquisitely nimble, ultra-HD camerawork that showcases the stunning natural architecture and engineering that’s imperceptible to the eye.
But there is one shot that gives us an altogether more uncomfortable vantage point. As Attenborough stands, seemingly canopied by dense growth on all sides, the zoom is pulled back to reveal that he is standing mere metres from a road; 70 per cent of rainforest plants, it transpires, today grow only a mile from a man-made track. It is a sobering reminder that unless decisive action is taken now to preserve these fragile, fragmented ecosystems, their loss from our planet could be, well, immutable.
★★★★★
On BBC1 from January 9 at 7pm
David Attenborough’s The Green Planet explores the fascinating world of flora
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