Review: BBC's Blue Planet III, narrated by David Attenborough, keeps the nature-film tradition alive

The BBC has begun airing a new nature documentary series, Blue Planet III, on Sunday nights on BBC One. It is narrated by 100-year-old naturalist and broadcaster David Attenborough. The Guardian's television reviewer calls it a standout, while acknowledging that it cannot repeat the revelatory force of the original Blue Planet in 2001, or the effect of the 2017 second series, which drew attention to plastic pollution in the oceans.

New discoveries

In the first episode, filmed in Shark Bay, Western Australia, the team solves the mystery of why dolphins are sometimes seen carrying sea sponges in their mouths. This required the latest remote cameras, careful courting of the dolphin in question, and the real risk of cameraman Alex being eaten by a tiger shark. In northern Australia, tawny sharks are shown hunting in packs and pretending to be asleep so as not to spook herring, before working together to drive the fish towards the shore, trap them and feed.

Tension and humour

In Brazil, the focus is a chase between a shark and a turtle, filmed with a drone and a camera attached to the turtle's back. The turtle escapes with a sharp turn that sends the shark's teeth glancing off its shell. In Indonesia, a pair of harlequin shrimp try to eat a starfish and pull off one of its arms. In the Brazilian mangroves, a fiddler crab waves his one big claw among hundreds of rivals before being eaten by a scarlet ibis.

A serious note

The series turns serious with a clownfish tending the anemone that shelters it, while a heatwave kills both the anemone and the coral reef. A before-and-after edit shows the reef's colours turning dead blackish brown, in shots filmed months apart. Attenborough closes by urging everyone to work together to protect our home, as the tiny fish did theirs.