Planet Earth Live: Quality Wildlife Programming Dead.

If you’re a David Attenborough fan, look away now.

Planet Earth Live, BBC1’s latest flagship wildlife programme, roared across my television screen this evening… well, it would have done, if they’d spent more time showing the bloody animals! Instead of a thought-provoking, awe-inspiring, edge-of-our-seats thrill-ride through the natural world, we were treated to 60 minutes of mind-numbing tedium designed for an attentionally deficient and perpetually ignorant audience.

Let’s get a few things straight: animals are not humans, they do not have names like ‘Luca’ and ‘Sophie’, and they are not fixated on dealing with interpersonal drama. At times it was like watching an episode of Eastenders, or reading a copy of Heat magazine, such was the inane commentary provided by Julia Bradbury and Richard Hammond, fine presenters who deserve better.

“If you were watching earlier, you will have seen Debbie struggling to feed her young, having had a falling out with the father of her children, then picking a fight with her sister in-law, before eating the neighbour’s offspring.” Ok, so I might be embellishing somewhat, but honestly, how could I not remember what you showed me THREE MINUTES AGO? And they are not having a family crisis, she’s a Brown Bear with cubs, not a single mother living in downtown Minneapolis.

Why can’t television be made unfussily, focus on the subject and provide insightful, calm narration? Why do we have to endure rampant hyperbole, cloying sentiment and idiotic close-ups? If Attenborough has taught us anything, it’s that documentary and the natural world are best shown naturally- they’re dramatic enough in themselves; all that the silly antics, tricks and flashing lights do is dumb down (yes, dumb-down) the content. And don’t even get me started on Julia ‘marking out her territory’… live!

Planet Earth Live is obviously geared to someone who isn’t me. It’s as if This Morning has rocked up on the Serengeti and, whilst I’d quite like them to dump Eamonn & Ruth smack in the middle of the jungle and leave them to fend for themselves, that’s not the point and not the window onto nature I want to peer through.

Please, save some money on expensive transcontinental folly BBC1, and try spending it on quality output instead.