The furry Tarzan that's proof even Sir David hasn't seen it all: CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews weekend TV 

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Planet Earth II

Rating:

The opening image of Planet Earth II (BBC1) contained the promise of everything to come. It was spectacular, it was beautiful, it was magical. A hot air balloon floated like a snowflake, two miles above an Alpine panorama.

As the pilot worked the burner, the sole passenger gazed over the mountains and turned to the camera with the smiling ease of a man who has been doing this for 60 years and more.

And in living rooms across the land, millions of viewers stopped marvelling at the frozen landscape and thought: ‘Sir David Attenborough is 90 — is it really wise to chuck him over Mont Blanc in a flimsy contraption like that?’

A pygmy sloth on the Caribbean isle of Escudo transformed into an action hero when a female called — even swimming dangerous rivers, like a furry Tarzan

Granted a chat with the great man after a preview screening last month, I raised that concern, as politely as possible. Sir David dismissed it with a wave of his hand and a chuckle — ‘I assure you, it’s absolutely a doddle!’ — and launched into an enthusiastic explanation of the science of sound, and why a balloonist can eavesdrop on conversations far below.

As an afterthought he added that, while going up was easy, coming back down could be perilous. ‘All balloon landings are basically controlled crashes in a laundry basket,’ he said with a breezy grin.

Though he has stayed in the studio for the most part of this series, confining himself to the voiceovers, his insouciant spirit of adventure inspires Planet Earth II. The goal of the camera crews, says chief producer Tom Hugh-Jones, is to capture animal behaviour that makes Sir David exclaim: ‘I haven’t seen that before!’

They succeeded time and again in the first episode, partly thanks to new filming technology that keeps the lens rock steady even when the cameraman is running or canoeing, and partly because of the intrepid daring of the teams. While shooting footage of the world’s largest penguin colony, on a remote outcrop in the Antarctic Ocean, the film-makers were stranded for more than a week by stormy seas.

But the reckless courage of the birds was even more thrilling, as they hurled themselves into 30ft waves, risking their lives to feed their chicks.

Ever since Zoo Quest in the Fifties, the Attenborough technique has been to tell stories. He constructs his tales with the skill of a novelist, and presents them as grippingly as a Shakespearean actor.

The opening image contained the promise of everything to come. It was spectacular, it was beautiful. A hot air balloon floated like a snowflake, two miles above an Alpine panorama

He didn’t simply lecture us on the mating habits of the pygmy sloth on the Caribbean isle of Escudo: he showed us how the male with his dopey eyes, usually so sleepy and slow, is transformed into an action hero when a female calls — even swimming dangerous rivers, like a furry Tarzan.

The truly edge-of-the-seat sequence, though, came from Galapagos, where newly hatched marine iguanas had to run for their lives across the sand to evade clusters of racer snakes. As the predators burst from a crevice in the rocks, writhing together like a mythical animal with a dozen heads, they looked like animated clay monsters from an old-fashioned horror movie.

I’m told that, when the crew saw them for the first time, they were too shocked to film. Sir David had never seen anything like it either. And that’s the highest possible praise.

Poldark 

Rating:

The mating habits of the Cornish gentry have been thoroughly studied over the past couple of months, but we never tire of seeing the dominant male defending his territory and fighting over females, in Poldark (BBC1).

The Cap’n and his bitter rival, George Warleggan, were snarling and scrapping like the Komodo dragons we’d watched an hour earlier on Planet Earth. First fists and feet in the library, then pistols and blazing torches on the lawn.

The women fought more coldly, with looks like daggers, but Demelza was in such a raging sulk that if she had fought a Komodo dragon, you wouldn’t have bet on the giant lizard.

There was too much of drippy Dr Enys and his spoilt sweetheart, which culminated in a daft romantic climax in a pub, with a shoelace for a wedding ring. The three little words we really wanted to hear came at the end: Poldark Will Return.