Frozen Planet

10th November 2011

Exodus' Paul Goldstein reviews the third episode of BBC One's Frozen Planet - Summer

MINKE CONDITION

Bored of it yet? No, nor me. That orca chase left me breathless, I woke this morning still harrowed by that dramatic and chilling chase. As it is less than a day old a little chronology should make the review easier: the opening Spitsbergen sequence gave me a wonderful deja vu as I not only felt I had seen the same bear but also the same cliffs, as it was the very same area where I had my best wildlife moment last year. Fortunately for the 100 people on board that day with me, the bear put on a better show clambering all over a castellated iceberg.

Yes the cubs were wonderful and again the overhead views were magnificent although the tiresome childish music for anything with even the remotest 'ah factor' is now beginning to curdle. What was good was some decent hard facts dusted off liberally throughout the show and always given greater gravitas and credibility by the legend that is Sir D.A. Terns fly 11,000 miles to Spitsbergen to behave like noisy neighbours and terrorise bears, good camera work, good fact.

'Battle at Kruger' has been a Youtube phenomenon over the last few years with 35million+ hits, the wolf attack on the musk oxen ranks pretty close. Each week I say ' my favourite moment of the series' but when those musk oxen turned, their dishevelled dreadlocks swirling like St Paul soap-dodging protesters and gave the wolves a good old fashioned shoeing, I was out of my seat.

I'm getting to the orcas but talking about family albums I was immediately taken back to the incredible north coast of South Georgia by the penguin footage. Those rookeries of Gold Harbour, St Andrew's Bay (the main one featured last night) and Salisbury Plain are immeasurable in wildlife terms and seeing the birds backlit, swimming in spume and froth and feeding was as majestic as ever ** as indeed were the playful adelies further south at Paulet Island on the eastern peninsular.

OK the orca hunt: this was gold, as good as I have ever seen. The sinister cetaceous pelaton were merciless coursing the poor Minke, it was savage, it was stunning, it was brutal and it was brilliant - it was what my license fee is about, thank you BBC.

Just one note,I am now bored of the smug bit at the end. Not only did last night's have little continuity with the programme but surely Freeze-frame could be allocated to the DVD extras package for the geeks and the rest of us could have ten minutes more footage. It is a bit of a one trick pony and surely those cameras were too close to the bears (our rule is 50 metres). Just a little moan because yet again it was off the scale.

**Stop Press 'Georgia .... on your mind? - Exclusive charter to South Georgia October 2013.

3rd November 2011

Exodus' Paul Goldstein reviews the second episode of BBC One's Frozen Planet - Spring

OK, as predicted, it did not quite reach the dizzy heights of last week, but no matter. As the autumn clocks fell back at the weekend, Frozen Planet 'sprung' onto the screens with more perfect polar protagonists than you could poke an icicle at.

Permit me to start small because perhaps the caterpillar entombed in its icy sarcophagus before emerging Lazarus-like was the most remarkable of all. It may have lacked the A-list wolf hunt box-office of the previous week but was a remarkable story: part survival, part Charlotte's Web.

Then of course the bears, I feel this will be a theme throughout the series. It is good Spitsbergen has played such a large part already in this series and is set for more exposure. It is my favourite destination in the world and some of this filming is beginning to look like a family album. The 'surf-dude' cubs as they emerged from their winter den sequence was superb, as was all the bear footage, but what set it apart was the overhead camera angle - especially the hunting sequence of the 'Clinton-Cards'-faced ring seal. Yes I know there has to be an anthropomorphic leaning to increase audiences but whoever put the 'naughty corner' line in Attenborough's mouth needs detention, as does the composer of the Tom and Jerry-style music.

The killer whales were back but fortunately for the Adelies they were pescatarian whales - a sort of Fulham and Putney Orca. Talking of Adelies, I have stood at Paulet Island on the eastern Antarctic Peninsular during hatching with 100,000 of these blue-eyed scamps and this brought it flooding back - truly astonishing. However, the scenes from South Georgia blew it all away in terms of penguins. The Kings, with their brown duffle-coated youngsters are staggering in terms of numbers alone. Throw in the fighting heavyweight elephant seal beach-masters and you have a wildlife spectacle on a different scale. South Georgia is special. Watch out for something equally special when Exodus goes there in 2013.

For years my week would revolve around Radio 4's 'I'm sorry I haven't a clue', right now this fauna festival and ornithological orgy are doing the same, leaving me hungry like the wolf at the end of each episode.

But, again as predicted, whilst last week's 6.8 million viewers is an outstanding number, twice as many people watched the appalling X-Factor... can anyone tell me why?

30th October 2011

Review By Exodus' Paul Goldstien - First episodes of Frozen Planet

Four years in the making, forty in the memory, Wednesday’s icy opening salvo was off the scale. This was an epic documentary which proves that might (and budget) is right. Everyone will have their favourite moments: orcas, ice crystals, wolf hunts or bears but that was the quickest hour I have ever watched on TV. Even the normally smug bit at the end where camera men and women show how their job is so much better than yours, was effective.

A heavyweight BBC Bristol ground-breaking (should that be ice-breaking) production, this formula owes at least a nod to Planet Earth, the astonishing series from five years ago. I felt that series was let down by chucking too many picture cards at the opening episodes, a necessary ruse but one that left the final broadcasts a little lightweight. I fear this may be the same but judging by the trailer for next week, there is still plenty of aces in the frozen deck.

Is this what the licence fee is for? A resounding yes. Is it right that the natural history unit spends millions on these capers? Yes. For not only is it frozen fauna as never seen before, but it is also educational as all these areas are desperately precarious on so many levels. In short, this series matters.

A couple of years ago I was lucky enough to spend three weeks with some of the Frozen Planet crew in Antarctica. We got stuck in the ice on that journey and were grateful we had those three on board as they could not have been more accommodating and entertaining. They had none of the precious prima donna nonsense so often associated with film crews and really earned their corn during that week-long icy-impasse. We were lucky enough to see some of the footage taken by helicopter of the emperor penguins which gave us some idea of the skill and commitment of these dedicated individuals.

But anyway, back to episode one, it is difficult to know where to start: the Spitsbergen male bear advancing Wenceslas-like in the female’s footsteps or the jawing and fighting later on in that sequence. Could it be the humpbacks rising imperiously among the millions of shearwaters, perhaps Armageddon of that huge glacier calve. However a straw poll would surely favour the wolf hunt or Weddell seal demise, not forgetting the sea lion chasing down the Falklands Gentoo. Whoops, I almost forgot the coruscating sequences from below the ice-cap.

The point is any one of those highlights would easily command a whole show but here they were dovetailed into sixty minutes. The filming was incredible, the music irritating, but it always is, but above all with this sort of footage plus the endearingly brilliant Attenborough, small excesses are easily forgiven. Many times I felt my shutter release finger twitch as yet another impossibly photogenic moment held my eye: the indignant snort from the bison, the airborne surfing Gentoos or that moment (surely) of the series as the bison sent his colleague cartwheeling in front of the coursing wolves.

Polar regions are harsh, unforgiving environments. They do not release their secrets without a scrap, one of the reasons I love Spitsbergen. To stand on the bow of an ice-breaker as she crackles through summer sea ice, eyes scorched by the 24 hour daylight on an endless quest for bears, is wildlife viewing from the highest firmament. No-one travelling there or indeed watching this masterpiece can have any illusions of how demanding these moving pictures are to produce, yet this is what gives it its charm as well as gravitas.

Paul Goldstein

Any relation reading this, especially jumper-buying aunts, a boxed set for Christmas will do nicely. It was sensational but also harrowing, almost visceral in intensity and indeed on occasion, frightening. However sadly the most terrifying thing is the execrable X Factor will still get more viewers.

By Exodus' Paul Goldstein

Frozen Planet is on Wednesdays on BBC1 at 9pm.

Paul Goldstein, Expedition Leader - Polar Bear Photographic Charters

Having completed over twenty expeditions, Exodus guide and award-winning photographer Paul Goldstein choice for our summer months is Spitsbergen, a programme he pioneered six years ago. Exodus is now the market leader in small ship voyages there. Paul has a ridiculous amount of energy and is, as the Sunday Times described him, ‘a preposterously vivacious guide of almost psychotic gusto'.

For more information about Paul's trips please see the Photography page