Latest news with #PlanetEarthII
The Herald Scotland
08-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
William praises Attenborough's dedication as he wishes him happy 99th birthday
The prince, in a message released on social media, wrote: 'As he turns 99 today, in his new film, Sir David has once again reminded us of the need to protect natural habitats – this time those beneath the ocean. 'He has dedicated his life to ensuring we understand the realities of what mankind is doing to the planet. As he turns 99 today, in his new film, Sir David has once again reminded us of the need to protect natural habitats – this time those beneath the ocean. He has dedicated his life to ensuring we understand the realities of what mankind is doing to the planet. However hard… — The Prince and Princess of Wales (@KensingtonRoyal) May 8, 2025 'However hard-hitting his message is, Sir David always leaves us with a sense of hope and optimism that all is not lost and this film is no different. 'We must act together, with urgency, to restore our oceans. Happy Birthday, David. W' The naturalist has been on our TV screens for more than seven decades presenting programmes such as Planet Earth and The Blue Planet. Mike Gunton, creative director at BBC Studios Natural History Unit, told the PA news agency that Sir David must have 'one of the greatest legacies of any human being ever.' Mr Gunton, who has worked with Sir David on documentaries including Attenborough And The Giant Dinosaur and Bafta-winning Planet Earth II, said: 'Each generation has its own kind of personal legacy from him, and I think that's remarkable'. King Charles meets David Attenborough as he attends the premiere of Ocean with David Attenborough at the Southbank Centre in London on May 6 (Alistair Grant/PA) 'But also, there's a broader, I suppose, global legacy, which I think is that he has shown us wonders, he's helped us understand wonders, and he's encouraged us to protect these wonders. 'If you could do that in a lifetime, and speak to hundreds upon hundreds of millions of people and inspire them to do all that, that's got to be one of the greatest legacies of any human being ever. 'And I think he's aware of that, and the responsibility of that, and he often talks about the privilege of being able to do that, and it's a privilege for those of us who have worked with him to have.' Mr Gunton began working with the broadcaster aged 29 and said it has been 'a life-defining experience' for him. He told PA: 'Every programme I have made with him has been a remarkable experience which the audience have always found completely memorable and worthwhile and that's a joy for anybody, to make things that are remembered, you know, they're historic, they're part of human history.' Sir David Attenborough in the press room with the Impact award at the National Television Awards in 2018 (Ian West/PA) Sir David was born David Frederick Attenborough on May 8 1926, in London, the son of an academic and principal of University College Leicester. Before joining the BBC in 1952, he studied geology at the University of Cambridge and served two years in the Royal Navy. He made his reputation with the ground-breaking Zoo Quest series, which he hosted for 10 years on the BBC. In 1965 he became controller of BBC2, overseeing the advent of colour TV, and he later became BBC director of programming. Ultimately, however, life as a broadcast executive did not appeal and he returned with relief to his early passions, programme-making and filming wildlife. Prince Charles and Princess Anne meet David Attenborough and Cocky, a cockatoo brought back from his last Zoo Quest expedition, at the BBC Television Studios (PA) His famous whispering voice captured the imaginations of the nation in 1979 when he was seen mingling and bonding with a family of gorillas in Life On Earth and its sequel, The Living Planet, in 1984. The following year, he was knighted by the late Queen Elizabeth II before being awarded a Knight Grand Cross honour in 2022. The TV presenter has two children, Susan and Robert, with his late wife Jane, whom he married in 1950. In recent years, Sir David, who resides in Richmond, London, has presented shows including Dynasties, Prehistoric Planet and Planet Earth III. In celebration of his 99th birthday, his new documentary about the health of the ocean airs in cinemas from Thursday. Also to mark his birthday, John Murray Press is giving at least 1,000 copies of his new book, Ocean: Earth's Last Wilderness, to schools and libraries across the UK.
Telegraph
01-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
How David Attenborough changed sport forever
The closest most of us associate the name Sir David Attenborough with the history of sport on television is his memorable commentary during an episode of Planet Earth II, broadcast in 2016. That was his breathless voiceover of the annual contest between freshly hatched iguana babies and racer snakes on the Galapagos Islands, a face-off which held the nation transfixed when that extraordinary footage of a life-or-death dash for the shoreline was first aired. But, unlikely as it may seem, the fact is Attenborough is also responsible for some of the few moments of the BBC's once prodigious sporting output that remain standing. Because, in the days before he became renowned for bringing us ever closer to the drama of the natural world, Attenborough was a hugely influential television controller. A wonderful moment on Centre Court as the crowd rises for Sir David Attenborough 💚 #Wimbledon — Wimbledon (@Wimbledon) July 1, 2024 Never mind the landmark series he commissioned like Civilisation, Monty Python's Flying Circus and the Old Grey Whistle Test, he is also the man who kept Match of the Day on our screens. Plus, he was so persuasive in his role as a telly executive he even managed to get the notoriously conservative Wimbledon authorities to change the colour of the tournament balls to yellow (eventually). Not to forget that, when millions of us hunker down to watch the final moments of the World Snooker Championship this weekend, we have one person to thank for it being on the box: David Attenborough. Back in the 1960s, while still in his early thirties, Attenborough had tired of his early career as a television executive and was studying for a postgraduate degree at the London School of Economics. But the BBC had long noted his innovative approach to programming and, with its new second television station struggling to make its presence known, persuaded him to become the second controller of BBC2, taking over in March 1965. His idea was to create a channel which, he once explained, 'catered to all levels of brow'. There was to be no traditional Reithian snobbery under his watch: all licence-fee payers would be invited to his channel. Not least fans of sport. On taking control, one of his first tasks was to rescue a programme commissioned by his predecessor Michael Peacock. Match of the Day had begun the previous August, its purpose to offer televised snippets of Saturday's football. And it had not gone down well in the corridors of the Football League. Those in charge of the game had always been wary of television, fearing that showing matches beyond the annual FA Cup final and the occasional England game would have a detrimental effect on live attendances. Thus it was decided among the game's hierarchy that the experimental first season of recorded highlights would be the last. But the new BBC2 boss was more than keen to keep the programme going. And in a meeting with the trepidatious blazers, Attenborough managed to assuage their doubts. He did it, he told a documentary to mark Match of the Day 's 50th anniversary, 'on the basis that nobody watched BBC2, which was more or less true. BBC2 was only visible in a small part of the country – London and Birmingham – and it had a tiny number of viewers'. 'Don't worry, no one's watching' is hardly the most compelling sell. But it worked. The Football League signed off on a new season-deal. Soon after which, thanks to Attenborough's shrewd negotiating skills, the show entered sporting folklore. Four years later, in 1969, Attenborough finally convinced the government to allow the BBC to introduce a new technology that had long since taken root in the USA and Japan: colour television. It required, however, expensive kit. And Attenborough needed something that would prove its vast superiority over bog-standard black and white to persuade viewers to fork out. So he called a meeting of senior producers, instructing all of them to come up with ideas. The best was a suggestion to embrace the game in which colour is absolutely central to its processes: snooker. Attenborough seized on the thought, sought the opinion of the established radio commentator Ted Lowe and immediately commissioned Lowe's idea for a show called Pot Black, a weekly competition involving eight players competing in one-frame challenges. Although available in colour for those who had new sets, for the rest of the nation it remained monochrome. Which explains Lowe's infamous attempt to clarify things in those early days: 'For those of you who are watching in black and white, the pink is next to the green.' It was Attenborough, moreover, who, in 1973, in his new capacity of director of programmes for the whole corporation, encouraged Grandstand to screen highlights of the semi-final and final of the World Snooker Championship. In 1978, after the tournament moved to the Crucible, daily coverage was introduced, an innovation that has remained in place ever since. Snooker was not the only sport he brought to the television audience in colour, either. He loved tennis, in particular Wimbledon. 'I mean, it is a wonderful plot: you've got drama, you've got everything,' he once told the Radio Times. 'And it's a national event, it's got everything going for it.' So his new colour BBC2, he decided, would feature not just recorded highlights in the evening as was traditional, but live matches during the day. Thus it was Attenborough who was responsible for half the British workforce feigning illness in order to spend the afternoon behind closed curtains watching the tennis. Even then, he was always seeking improvements. He noticed, while watching his station's output, that it was hard for the home audience to follow white balls moving across green turf. Why not introduce yellow coating for the balls? The International Tennis Federation did a bit of investigation and discovered Attenborough was right: it was not just the green of the All England Club lawns, yellow was a much more visible colour against all the surfaces on which the game was played. In 1972, it decreed yellow was the way forward. Though being Wimbledon, the annual fortnight did not adopt the Attenborough yellow until 1986. By which time the great man himself had long moved on into his career as a nature documentary maker. There can be no doubt he was rather good at that, too. But it is in sport we have a lot to be grateful to him for. Thanks to his hapless successors in charge of sport, the BBC has largely wilted in the face of rights challenges from more commercially muscular operations. The fact is, there is not much more remaining in the corporation's portfolio that does not have, some six decades on, a mark left on it by Attenborough. Even in sport, it seems, he is a national treasure.
The Independent
24-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Tom Hanks is the face of a new BBC nature series. Here's what you need to know
Sir David Attenborough is Britain's undisputed nature show king. However, across the Atlantic another charismatic, captivating figure is emerging as the voice of natural history - none other than Tom Hanks. He is the face of a new blockbuster nature show showcasing the beauty of the wild Americas. TV producer Mike Gunton has now recalled how he thought Hanks would be a top nature talent. Sat in an office pitching to Hollywood execs, he said his name popped into his head one day. 'I'd just finished working on a project with David Attenborough, and I was thinking, 'Who's the equivalent? Who does everybody want to be with? Who does everybody trust? Who does everybody want to hear?' It's got to be Tom Hanks.' Several years later, the multi award-winning actor can be heard narrating a new 10-part natural world series sweeping the enormous breadth of the Americas. Covering two continents and spanning multiple ecosystems, the ambitious show was filmed over the course of five years and 180 expeditions. 'As far as nature is concerned, this is one super landmass,' says Gunton, creative director of Factual and the Natural History Unit for BBC Studios, whose past accolades include Planet Earth II and Dynasties. 'It's the only place that reaches right up into the Arctic and right down into the Antarctic. It splits oceans and has the Tropics of Cancer, the Tropic of Capricorn, the Equator and every type of habitat.' Commissioned for an initial US release, the blockbuster series intentionally aims to instil a sense of national pride in the destinations featured. Entertaining whilst being educational, it's a visual safari and Tom Hanks is very much along for the ride. 'It feels like Tom is sitting here with his arm around you, saying, 'I've just seen this most incredible thing' – rather than a voice of God saying this happens here and this happens there,' adds Gunton. From bison on the Great Plains to polar bears in Hudson Bay, countless bucket-list wildlife experiences feature along with behaviours captured for the first time – including several male blue whales racing along the coast of California, a sequence which Gunton highlights as one of his favourites. 'This is an animal that is the size of a jumbo jet, almost going at 30 miles an hour and then leaping out of the water. That's a lot of energy. We don't really know why they were doing it, but it's incredible. One of the most impressive animals of all time doing something that is some of the most impressive things I've ever seen.' But it's not just the animals that shine. 'You don't just go to the giant redwood forest to see the giant redwoods,' Gunton points out. 'You go there to experience the whole environment. We work very hard to invoke the character of individual places. These aren't just locations.' In every episode, efforts are made to make the wild world feel relatable. At a time when political upheavals in the USA threaten to unravel years of environmental protection efforts, connecting with audiences is more important than ever before. 'It's a good time to remind people that this is special,' admits Gunton diplomatically. 'You've got something incredible here, it should be treasured. But it's vulnerable. It's like that Joni Mitchell song. You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone. 'Tom feels that very strongly as well. He was keen to make sure that we reminded the audience that these wonders are on their doorstep, but they're fragile, they're precious, we have to treasure them.' Mike Gunton shares several standout sequences from the series… 'It's hard to find real wilderness, but this is definitely real wilderness. There's been a lot of protection of pumas and numbers are increasing but the reason why it's hard to find them is because they're brilliant at camouflage. 'If you'd asked me, I'd say filming pumas was one of the hardest shoots, just because physically it's so demanding. As a filmmaker, it's tough because you can't go in vehicles. You have to do it pretty much all on foot. Now, if you ask Tom Hanks [about the toughest shoot], he'd say, filming army ants in the Amazon, because they want to bite you.' Blue whales in California, USA 'Blue whales are notoriously difficult to film – this is the biggest animal that's ever lived. They're mysterious. We know very little about them. 'We found this one camera operator who had incredible access to a secret location, and he managed to film not just one, not just two or three, but four blue whales.' Burrowing owls, Florida, USA 'The natural habitat of these tiny owls is close-cropped prairies, where they can see over the grass for predators. But they've moved into human habitats where people beautifully mow their lawns. 'Males build these burrows and do a bobbing dance to attract a mate. Our story is that we join this community of owls, all of whom are paired off. There's one guy who was too late to the party, and he mournfully does this little dance. We do a kind of Sleepless in Seattle montage where the days go by, the sun sets, the sun rises. 'He does one last dance and he hears a female. She's also late to the party, and he goes into a hyperdrive. It's hilarious. There's this lovely moment where they meet, and she turns and does this big wink at him.' 'The story here is one of infidelity. To attract a mate, males do a dance and show off their blue feet. We filmed a courting pair, but when the male goes off to find food, the female's head is turned by another male who has even bluer feet, and she starts to sort of flirt with him. 'The other male then comes back, and they have a bit of a barney. We gave Tom a script but encouraged him to extemporize. He does it perfectly exclaiming, 'He's not gonna put up with that'. 'It's so unlike a narrator. That's what is unique about this project. There are these moments where, as an audience, you're brought into the shows through Tom almost the breaking the fourth wall.'
