"Our Planet " on Netflix and why you should watch it

My earliest memories of watching wildlife documentaries date back to when I was probably around 13 years old. Appa had got a high resolution almost flat screen TV - among the best of its times. Appa always made sure we had good sound and TV systems at home - we drew from his penchant for clear images and sharp sound effects.   National Geographic and Discovery were my favourite channels. My idea of summer vacation mornings after dad and mom left for office, was to close all the curtains and make the living room as dark as possible, switch on Nat Geo , plonk some pillows and get lost in a whole new world - one that was as serene and breathtakingly beautiful, as it was unforgiving and brutal.  I did not know Sir David Attenborough enough then, but Steve Irwin, Jane Goodall and other conservationists were my heroes.  To think of a human braving all odds to stay in the wild and try to preserve the gentle balance of endangered ecosystems, was romantic.  Wild life documentaries came with a movie like narration, following the life of an animal over many years at times. I distinctly remember one, where a forest ranger family adopts an abandoned lion cub named Sunshine, rears and gets the cub ready for life in the wild.  I watched in awe as the children in the family rolled around in their garden with the not so small lion cub as it grew older.  Forest ranger became my ultimate dream job and fancied having a lion for a pet.

Documentaries played a huge role in my obsession with animals .  Come to think of it - just because we have a more evolved brain, us homo sapiens have managed to take hold of earth's resources and make it our own. The rest of our flora and fauna can fend for themselves with what is left after we've had our fill. Talk of survival of the fittest and evolution by natural selection , but we seem to want to use up stuff at the cost of creating an imbalance that could question our existence. All of us have experienced drought this year - what if the situation lasted for a few months instead of one or two? Would our jobs really matter when no amount of money can buy you a bucket of clean water?  What is value addition in times when clean water, good air and food are scarce?

Does all this digressive rant have any connect with wild life documentaries? 

To quote Sir David Attenborough

" From the delicate co-dependencies of bees and orchids, to the dramatic connection between cheetah and gazelle, all life on Earth is both product and contributor to its place in space and time. This complex web of life of which we are part, has been a millenia in the making. We do know for certain that these connections can break. Right now , we are in the midst of earth's sixth mass extinction. One every bit as profound and far reaching, as the one that wiped out dinosaurs. 96% of the mass of mammals on the planet today, are us and the livestock we have domesticated. Only 4% is everything else. 70% of all birds on earth are domesticated poultry.  Nature determined how we survive. Now, we determine how nature survives. We break natures connections at our peril. Conserving nature, is a communications challenge, as much as it is a scientific one.  I always believe,  few people will love and protect the natural world, if they first don't understand it. The natural world, is not just nice to have. It fundamentally matters to each and every one of us." 


That is what " Our Planet ", a documentary on Netflix is all about - showing nature in all its glory and interconnected harmony. So much so, that we start to  think, if not worry,  about the consequences of our actions on the wider world we call home. The concept of home becomes fleeting, when you think of the whole world as home -this big beautiful planet we are lucky to inhabit and enjoy.

If you have watched the brilliant "Blue Planet" , both parts, by BBC , Our Planet follows on the same lines, except, produced by Netflix.  My gripe with Blue Planet is that it is not as easily accessible for on demand viewing, being property of the BBC.  Netflix lets you steam Our Planet to your hearts content.

Our Planet , is of course, in the angelic ASMR voice of Sir David Attenborough. You can feel the love in his voice, when we narrates a daddy penguin feeding his baby chick ; and the pain, when he
follows the visuals of a polar bear stuck in a small ice log with nowhere to go in the melting polar belt.  Spectacular 4K video imagery takes us so close to the lives of animals and even insects, that we forget this was filmed on camera and edited. The music and story telling is wonderfully weaved into the visuals, keeping us fully invested in the lives of the animals and their delicate ecosystems.


Some of the segments, are pure delight, such as the elaborate courting ritual of the male bird of paradise. Luckily, this segment is on the promo videos on youtube, so here is the link. A forest guide once told me , "Humans apart, the male is the more attractive in all other species", which set me thinking why it is that we think of female humans more attractive than males.  There is no such deliberation here for the bird of paradise. The male is clearly quite an eye catcher - with his head gear,  blue eyes and feathers. Listening to Sir Attenborough describe his dance moves with metaphors such as  "the Whirling Dervish",  is such a joy.

(Side note, watching Our Planet on the weekends with the kid, is a new routine. I find it quiet difficult to explain mating routines to a five year old who has a 100 questions every second)

In each episode,  emphasis is placed on establishing the interconnection between animals, birds , insects and the surroundings.

The great circle of life, is more apparent in the Lion King setting - gazelle eats grass, lion eats gazelle, lion dies and feeds the grass etc. It is fascinating to observe this in situations we are less exposed . One episode shows how Whale eats krill, Whale poop feeds the phytoplankton that converts it to food in the presence of sunlight.  The connections get more interesting in a rain forest setting.  Orchids create traps with an oily liquid, which bugs rub on themselves to take on a scent to attract females, when the bug leaves the flower,  pollen sticks on its back which it carries on for reproduction of the orchids.  It is amazing what  evolution over many centuries can lead to,  the complex networks and diversity of living things that live off one another.

I once heard a influential person tell me that a senior leader has plans to use some of our smaller islands, to grow palm plantations to feed the need for palm oil. I shuddered at the thought of a forest set up being cleared up to set up a monotonous palm plantation. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2018/12/palm-oil-destroying-rainforests-household-items/

It is naive to think replacing trees with other trees is the same thing. It is clearly not.  Our Planet will make you see it.

Yours truly is a cry baby and can start bawling at the snap of a finger. Our Planet moved me to tears a few times. Especially, the episode with the largest walrus congregation in the world. Walruses now don't have enough ice to rest their heavy bodies on, so they climb up rocky terrains and fall down to their death.  30 years after Chernobyl, a ghost town rendered unviable for human settlement for many decades, nature has slowly started returning the area to what it was - a forest with wolves and deer and rabbits.

Words do no justice to the poetic beauty of this series. It has to be experienced. It is truly for everyone in the family  - young and old.

Our Planet could prompt action in the smallest of ways - setting up a birder at home, growing a few plants at a window sill,  or taking a protected safari instead of watching animals at a zoo.  It could, like my early age documentaries,  kindle a lasting fire to lead a sustainable lifestyle, which is my hope for our five year old.