MOST of the planet seems to be watching Blue Planet II. At last count, 14 million people sat down to drink in the wonder of the most recent episode last Sunday night (only to be beaten by the 2014 World Cup Final and last year’s Great British Bake Off finale). Even if you don’t know anything about the intricacies and extreme technical challenges of underwater filming in a submersible, miles down from the surface, it soon sinks in – albeit subliminally – that this BBC series is a really flashy jewel in the crown of that genre we blandly refer to as "nature documentary".
The programme has been four years in the making, yet we gobble it up as quick as you can say, "tusk fish". And what a clever fish that was! Hell-bent on winning the soft, tasty morsel inside a clam, it had the ingenuity and chutzpah to find a really hard rock on the seabed on which to batter the clam – time and time and time again – until, finally, Mr (or Miss) tusk fish smashed through to the prize within. I’ll never think of fish the same way again. I’m sure that's exactly what presenter, David Attenborough, intended: to make us think more intelligently and empathetically about the creatures that live, work and play in our oceans.
I was dragged kicking and screaming to sit down and watch Blue Planet II. I was shamed into it by one of my children who said: “You never sit down to watch telly. Other families sit down and watch stuff like this ... together.” That throwaway remark fairly rattled my cage. I began to think of the lost city of "family viewing". Do folk do that any more? Had I forgotten all about the bonding possibilities and opportunities of en famille goggling? And then I did remember something: Malcom In the Middle, an American series broadcast in the late 1990s about a averagely dysfunctional family, with a comically neurotic matriarch of a mother called, Lois. Brian Cranston played the oppressed but seemingly more rational father. The hero was Malcolm (middle child in a family of three boys) whose narrative powers of observation and analysis offered raw insights into what made this far-from-perfect family tick. It was moving, reassuring and very funny and one of the few programmes that both me and the children thoroughly enjoyed watching together.
And yes, the process was kind of healing. Inter-sibling conflicts were temporarily shelved and nobody worried too much about homework getting done or the fact that, as none of the uniforms had been put in the wash, nobody would have dry clothes in the morning. It was a small price to pay.
Now, though, things are somewhat different. Most of us watch solo: Netflix in the privacy of our own rooms, BBC iPlayer in our own time. Children grow up and move away and the closest you get to family viewing is a link sent by text from different countries or cities about a new series they think you might like. Soon, watching TV together as a family will be as rare as sitting down on Christmas Day to listen to the Queen’s speech or watching the World Cup final every few years. People scatter, for work, for relationships, or just to explore the wider world. Families are not what they used to be. More and more people live alone and feel isolated and vulnerable as they get older. A growing number are without children, either by design or just because that’s how it worked out. Some have adult children who don’t bother with them at all or who continue to act like kids, failing to respond in kind to the love and care lavished on them as children.
Increasingly, we live in singleton, solo worlds. This can be highly stressful due to the isolationist nature of it. Nobody to talk through our bad dreams with or to console us about the fact that we can’t afford to take a short break or holiday to interrupt the isolation or escape a bullying colleague at work for a few days. Maybe this is partly why nature documentaries are so popular: they take hold of our minds, our imaginations, for a short while and allow us to escape.
It is not a flight into unreality, but more of a psychic holiday, a reminder that nature is always there, in all its wonder and complexity and that we are part of it. In this sense, programmes like Blue Planet make us feel less alone. At least for a while.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here