“National treasure” doesn’t even begin to do justice to David Attenborough. The natural history presenter is at once the country’s favourite beloved uncle, a lion of broadcasting and a voice in the wilderness warning that our addiction to plastics and other pollutants jeopardises the myriad of lifeforms with which we share the planet. At age 92, Attenborough continues to push boundaries. He returns to the airwaves on Sunday with a landmark new BBC series, Dynasties. Echoing past triumphs beginning with Life on Earth (1979) and leading up to last year’s Blue Planet II, the show is being hailed as a leap forward in natural history television, combining state of the art filmmaking with life-and-death drama straight out of Shakespeare. It undoubtedly promises to be a gripping watch. Having told the story of evolution and of nature’s ability to adapt to the most challenging environments, Attenborough now gives us a ground level view of life in the wild even as human population growth – and the attendant environmental destruction – hurtles towards a cataclysmic tipping point. And that’s just the start. In 2019, he reunites with the creators of Planet Earth and Blue Planet for the Netflix eight-parter Our Planet – a collaboration with the World Wildlife Fund that will see Attenborough once more taking advantage of his unique profile to caution that humanity’s devastating impact is reaching a point of no return. But first there is the small matter of Dynasties, a globe-trotting project four years in the making. Each episode tracks the… [Read full story]
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