Wildlife television as we know it was constructed around Attenborough. Take him away and the whole thing needs to be reinvented.
The documentary features Najin and Fatu, the last two northern white rhinos (pictured here with former head caregiver Mohammed Doyo).
Dai Kurokawa / EPA
A conservation scientist interviewed on the programme says Sir David tells it like it is.
The United Nations predicts the world will be home to nearly 10 billion people by 2050 – making global greenhouse emission cuts ever more urgent.
NASA/Joshua Stevens
To be clear, I’m not advocating compulsory population control, here or anywhere. But we do need to consider a future with billions more people, many of them aspiring to live as Australians do now.
St Andrews Bay, South Georgia. A colony of young penguin chicks wait for their parents to return with food.
BBC Studios/Fredi Devas
Wildlife TV producers used to think that focus on environmental issues could only be structured around doom and gloom stories – scaring away large audiences.
A gentoo penguin comes face to face with a leopard seal on Seven Worlds, One Planet.
BBC NHU
In showing the natural world as untouched by human impacts and shying away from recommending action, Attenborough’s latest documentary falls short of its potential.
From the hippie heaven of the 1970s to the massive mainstream event it is now, Glastonbury has always found a way to fuse popular culture with a potent political message.
David Attenborough at the 2019 World Economic Forum in Davos.
EPA/Ian Ehrenzeller
Planet Earth II Live fuses footage from the BBC series with live orchestration. Despite some narrative flaws, it’s a stirring call to look after our environment.
Attenborougharion rubicundus is one of more than a dozen species named after the legendary naturalist Sir David Attenborough.
Simon Grove/Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery
Scientists have been naming species after well-known people since the 18th century, often in a bid for publicity. But the issue deserves attention – 400,000 Australian species are yet to be described.
My holiday to Borneo in 2004 was more than just a chance to see incredible wildlife like orangutans and pygmy elephants. It helped crystallise for me the innate nature of scientific thinking.
Is it his physics, his hair or something else? Brian Cox pulls record audiences around the world.
ntnu-trondheim/flickr