The return of Blue Planet III, narrated by the 100-year-old David Attenborough, proves to be a corker of a wildlife series. While it may not replicate the landmark impact of the original in 2001 or the conservation drive of Blue Planet II in 2017, its excellence stands as a bright flash of hopeful defiance.
Wonders still to find
Episode one solves a long-standing mystery in Shark Bay, Western Australia, where dolphins are seen clutching sea sponges in their mouths. The making-of featurette reveals the team used the latest remote cameras and carefully courted the dolphin, with cameraman Alex facing the real risk of being eaten by a tiger shark.
In northern Australia, tawny sharks display new behaviour, hunting in packs and deceiving herring by pretending to be asleep before driving the fish shorewards to trap and feast on them.
Tension and comic relief
A tense death chase unfolds in Brazil, where a turtle grazing on seaweed must break the surface for air, alerting a shark to its presence. A drone and a camera on the turtle's back capture the escape, including a sharp-turn manoeuvre that leaves the shark's teeth glancing off the shell.
Comic moments come from a pair of harlequin shrimp in Indonesia, tumbling adorably as they pull off a starfish's arm, and a fiddler crab in Brazilian mangroves whose courtship display ends fatally when he is distracted by a rival and eaten by a scarlet ibis.
A serious turn
The series turns serious with stunning force, showing a clownfish tending to an anemone dying from a heatwave, with a before/after edit revealing the coral reef's collapse into dead blackish brown. Attenborough renews his familiar plea, his voice weathered almost to a whisper: "These tiny fish helped to protect their home. Imagine what we could achieve if we all worked together to protect ours."
Blue Planet III is available on iPlayer.
