BBC Focus Magazine

[M Paul Lloyd]

To the Ends of the Earth
Episode 1 of 7
Duration: 1 hour
Wed 26 Oct 2011 21:00
David Attenborough travels to the end of the earth, taking viewers on an extraordinary journey across the polar regions of our planet, North and South. The Arctic and Antarctic are the greatest and least known wildernesses of all

More here
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00zj1q5

[Liam Sheppard]

it was ok, the end bit is the best bit! seems the same as bits of all the other bbc programmes

[M Paul Lloyd]

I was most impressed with the photography to be honest, I have some experience of trying to work in subzero temperatures and it isn't easy, I take my hat off to them.

Not as much science as I had hoped for but I will be making a point of watching it each week.

[focus_ed]

I thought this was incredible - just jaw-dropping. My colleagues on Focus feel the same way.

Personally, I think this is the best nature programme I've ever seen.

[Lateralman]

Agreed, it was visually stunning and absolutely fabulous.

[The Beige Avenger]

Those Orca are just too clever...

[Twelfth Monkey]

I thought it was fantastic. Attenborough's a life-long hero of mine. I wrote to him after reading Life on Air and got a charming letter in return, hand-written including the envelope, and posted on the first day that he could have received my letter. His letter sits framed upon a wall.

I'm glad I'm not a gentleman polar bear though...

[M Paul Lloyd]

Just to bump this back up the page and don't forget you can catch up with the iPlayer if you missed out.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/search?q=frozen%20planet

Winter
Episode 5 of 7
Duration: 1 hour
Wednesday 23rd November 21:00

There is no greater test for life than winter, as temperatures plummet to 70 below and winds reach 200kph. Darkness and ice extend across the polar regions and only a few remarkable survivors gamble on remaining.
We join a female polar bear trekking into the Arctic mountains to give birth as the first blizzards arrive. Out on the frozen ocean, the entire world's population of spectacled eider ducks brave the winter in a giant ice hole kept open by ferocious currents. Arctic forests transform into a wonderland of frost and snow - the scene of a desperate and bloody battle between wolf and bison, but also where a remarkable alliance between raven and wolverine is made. Beneath the snow lies a magical world of winter survivors. Here tiny voles dodge the clutches of the great grey owl, but cannot escape the ultimate under-show predator - the least weasel.
Midwinter and a male polar bear wanders alone across the dark, empty icescape. Below the snow, polar bear cubs begin life in an icy den while fantastical auroras light the night skies above. In Antarctica, we join male emperor penguins in their darkest hour, battling to protect precious eggs from fierce polar storms. Weddell seals escape to a hidden world of jewel-coloured corals and alien-looking creatures but frozen devastation follows as sinister ice stalactites reach down with deadly effect.
The sun finally returns, and with it comes the female emperor penguins, sleek and fat, ready to deliver the first meal to their precious chick. Having survived winter, this ultimate ice family now have a head start in raising baby. The Adelies flood back and as the ice edge bustles with life, male emperor penguins can finally return to the sea.

[M Paul Lloyd]

Last one folks and just to spice things up a bit this episode is not going to be shown in the US, too contentious apparently?.

Episode 7 of 7

Today 21:00 BBC One

David Attenborough journeys to both polar regions to investigate what rising temperatures will mean for the people and wildlife that live there and for the rest of the planet.

David starts out at the North Pole, standing on sea ice several metres thick, but which scientists predict could be open ocean within the next few decades. The Arctic has been warming at twice the global average, so David heads out with a Norwegian team to see what this means for polar bears. He comes face-to-face with a tranquilised female, and discovers that mothers and cubs are going hungry as the sea ice on which they hunt disappears. In Canada, Inuit hunters have seen with their own eyes what scientists have seen from space; the Arctic Ocean has lost 30% of its summer ice cover over the last 30 years. For some, the melting sea ice will allow access to trillions of dollars worth of oil, gas and minerals. For the rest of us, it means the planet will get warmer, as sea ice is important to reflect back the sun's energy. Next David travels to see what's happening to the ice on land: in Greenland, we follow intrepid ice scientists as they study giant waterfalls of meltwater, which are accelerating iceberg calving events, and ultimately leading to a rise in global sea level.
Temperatures have also risen in the Antarctic - David returns to glaciers photographed by the Shackleton expedition and reveals a dramatic retreat over the past century. It's not just the ice that is changing - ice-loving adelie penguins are disappearing, and more temperate gentoo penguins are moving in. Finally, we see the first ever images of the largest recent natural event on our planet - the break up of the Wilkins Ice Shelf, an ice sheet the size of Jamaica, which shattered into hundreds of icebergs in 2009.

[M Paul Lloyd]

Just to update you, apparently it will now be broadcast in the US...... not sure what time of day that might be though..

[Lateralman]

The last episode was amazing. Those lads gathering the research have some guts. The facts where presented in a vividly spectacular way.

Everyone on the planet should see this as the undeniable before and after imagery speaks for itself.

I liked the Louis Armstrong touch at the end although I was expecting him to burst into song. A sound mix of the two, (David kicking it off and Louis wrapping it up) may have been better but I am only being picky.

[Liam Sheppard]

I recall my earlier comment, it was a great series. I loved the orca and penguin sequences and the wooly bear caterpillar!

blue planet wins though!

[Lateralman]

Unfrozen Planet!

In a hundred years time they will be playing this back on the multiracial Ark and saying, ‘They told us so.’

[M Paul Lloyd]

I have to say the last one was a bit of an anticlimax for me, a lot of stock footage and opinions seemed to dominate, but above all else I think it is the camera teams that deserve all the glory for the series, Attenborough, even with the alphabet of letters after his name, was just a 'front of house' man.

[Lateralman]

True, the camera operators deserve the glory but what presence and credibility Attenborough has.

He just laid out the bare facts and kept it PC.

Not bad going for a chap in his eighties.

Apart from the before and after historic photographs I did not notice any stock footage.

[M Paul Lloyd]

The time lapse film of the moving glaciers is about ten years old now and the collapse of the Ross ice shelf took place in 2006. I noticed other clips which I recognised from previous documentaries but can't actually put a date to them.
I'm not complaining but after all the ground breaking stuff that the greater part of the series covered I found the end game a little disappointing.

[Nails]

Just wondered what your thoughts were on the tabloid sensation of zoo footage of baby polar bears being used.
i havn't seen all of the series, and I certainly don't read the daily rags but there was a front page on one particularly distasteful tabloid that made it sound like all of the footage is stagedm and so it is all a bg con.

Sensationailst I think, did they really think that Steve Irwin just drove around the outback looking for venomous creatures to play with?

Do they really think a camaraman would be able to hide in a predator's den and just watch the babies being nursed?

Are these people really that stupid or just trying to fill more coloumn inches?

[Lateralman]

They are stupid and are doing the incredible documentary, humanity, and themselves a disservice.

[M Paul Lloyd]

Are these people really that stupid or just trying to fill more coloumn inches?

Both.

[Liam Sheppard]

nobody cares! its a specatcle, its a story, we still saw a bear give birth, that wasn't fake..

Do these people have any idea how impossible it would be to get a camera in a polar bear den in the arctic!