Sir David Attenborough, a world producer and natural history presenter has been working from home to save the world – with the help of a new TV show called “A Perfect Planet,” a few blankets and a crew member in his garden
LONDON – Sir David Attenborough is a globetrotter, exploring distant lands and alien species for TV audiences since the 1950s. The pandemic may have kept it at home for much of 2020, but that didn’t stop the mythical host from continuing the work to get the world involved in. climate change.
Attenborough recorded one of his trade-offs – warm, calm and full of infectious interest for the natural world – for the new BBC and Discovery series “A Perfect Planet,” which arrives in early January.
Staying home at Attenborough, 94, is not entirely cut off from nature.
“I saw the world go by in the natural world in my garden with a continuity and intensity that I could not give it, almost forever. ”
He has only left home twice, to go to the dentist.
The recording of “A Perfect Planet” required a bit of redecoration of the dining room at the west London home of Attenborough.
Comforters or duvets hung around the walls to suppress any echoes and a technical set allowed Attenborough to see the paintings, and Executive Representative Alastair Fothergill advised him, from more than 100 miles away in Bristol.
The microphone cable went out the window so that a member of the team in the yard could record the sound.
“He has a caboose now because winter has come, we got a hut for him. But in the summer he was sitting outside in the water and listening to what I was saying and recording it, ”said Attenborough.
This was not the only performance under remote control of the series.
The musical album – which was accompanied by anything from thousands of flames nesting in the hostile salt lakes of Central Africa to the red crabs of Christmas Island migrating from the forest to the Indian Ocean – also went a long way.
“Our amazing writer (Ilan Ishkeri) worked with an orchestra in Iceland because Iceland was not very locked. They had very little COVID. He was in fact directing and directing that concert from the UK, ”said Fothergill.
“It’s been challenging. But I think the end result is completely in line with the very high standards we have set. ”
The foundation of the series highlights why the Earth is such an environment for so many different species to live and coexist. Thrown in 31 countries, it took 4 years and six volcanic eruptions to assemble a dense film that features river turtles laying eggs in the Amazon’s sand bars, brown bears fishing for salmon in Russia and gibbons swing tropical forests of Southeast Asia.
Different times look at the essential roles of the sun, ocean, volcanoes, the weather and of course, humans.
Everything Attenborough does will address the climate crisis and what people can do, and what they should stop doing, to help save this delicate ecosystem.
Disappointing that the United Nations Climate Change Conference has been postponed until next year, the deliverer and campaigner hope that “A Perfect Planet” will “inspire”.
“It’s very important to give people solutions. I think another way people stick their heads in the sand. You need to tell them what they can do to turn things around, ”said Fothergill, a long-time Attenborough colleague.
In terms of how nature has healed through the pandemic, Attenborough knows it is at a high cost: “Thousands are dying. Let’s reduce it.
“It should make the rest of us, the survivors, pull ourselves together and see that we can work together,” he said. “We can think of solutions, analyze them, and apply them internationally.”
It is a message that he thinks people are listening to.
“If humanity is to survive without disasters, now is the time to do just that.”
Attenborough said he is thankful he is still able to tell the story of the planet.
“It’s good to feel that you can still do it. I’m waiting for them to tell me I’m not. But I mean I’m very lucky, ”Attenborough told The Associated Press. “A lot of my friends, through no fault of their own, can’t do it and can’t get around.”
When asked if he has been secretive for so long, Attenborough reflects on the question and says, “Well …” he bends controversially towards the screen.
“No, no,” he concluded, laughing.
“A Perfect Planet” launches the new service find + on 4 January and will appear on BBC One UK and BBC Earth Canada on 3 January.