{"id":41035,"date":"2011-10-30T15:44:37","date_gmt":"2011-10-30T15:44:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/my-love-letter-to-the-makers-of-frozen-planet-not-exactly-rocket-science\/"},"modified":"2011-10-30T15:44:37","modified_gmt":"2011-10-30T15:44:37","slug":"my-love-letter-to-the-makers-of-frozen-planet-not-exactly-rocket-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/astronomy\/my-love-letter-to-the-makers-of-frozen-planet-not-exactly-rocket-science.php","title":{"rendered":"My love letter to the makers of Frozen Planet | Not Exactly Rocket Science"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The first episode of Frozen Planet – the BBC’s new mega-series on life at the poles, fronted by the peerless David Attenborough – aired on Wednesday. It exceeded my already lofty expectations, and I’ve written a comment piece for the Guardian<\/a> that’s a bit of a love letter to the makers of the show, the BBC’s Natural History Unit, and the BBC’s attitude to science programmes more generally. Extract below; go read the whole thing<\/a>.<\/p>

Giant unicorn-whales with tusks? That’s why I pay my licence fee<\/strong><\/p>

Here is what I do when I’m feeling down about the country: I load up the Wikipedia page for the BBC Natural History Unit and click on the “In Production”<\/a> link. Happy sighs ensue.<\/p>

The unit’s latest product, aired on Wednesdays, is Frozen Planet<\/a>, a majestic tour of Arctic and Antarctic wildlife ably narrated by Sir David Attenborough, an 85-year-old man who insists on travelling to the south pole while people many decades his junior make a small noise whenever we sit down.<\/p>

On the screen, polar bears mate and fight, wolves run down herds of bison<\/a> and lunging whales create concentric ripples of fleeing fish. It would take several thousands of pounds to see these sights in person, but for £145.50 a year<\/a>, I can recline on my sofa and watch the world’s jammiest penguin escape from the world’s most incompetent sea lion. From the screen, that velvety voice: “Never have the roles of hunter and hunted been played with so little skill.” Fortunately, the same can’t be said for the people behind the cameras.<\/p><\/blockquote>

Photo via BBC NHU<\/p>

<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The first episode of Frozen Planet – the BBC’s new mega-series on life at the poles, fronted by the peerless David Attenborough – aired on Wednesday. It exceeded my already lofty expectations, and I’ve written a comment piece for the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"limit_modified_date":"","last_modified_date":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-astronomy"],"modified_by":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41035"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41035"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41035\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}