TV Review: Nature's Great Events

TV Review / Jeremy Clay

Whoever you are, whatever your problems, thank your lucky stars you’re not a sardine.

The dolphins are after them. The sharks are after them. The whales and the gannets and the seals are after them. Actually, the seals are after the gannets too. But only because they might have eaten sardine.

When you’re a sardine, there’s no respite even when you’re dead.

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So it’s probably all for the best that sardines have got tiny minds, or the seas would be all a-churn with their thrashing paranoia.

These whipping boys of the deep were slaughtered on an industrial scale in a quite stunning episode of Nature’s Great Events (9pm, BBC1).

It was your actual feeding frenzy. An orgy of killing, that looked for all the world like an underwater version of a Battle of Britain dogfight.

Breathtaking footage of coastal carnage caught a 15 mile long convoy of sardines twisting this way and that, as thousands of dolphins and sharks set about them with bitey abandon.

Gannets dive-bombed from the skies, leaving a trail of bubbles, like the bullets streaking through the water in the opening shots of Saving Private Ryan.

The sardines were attacked from below. They were attacked from both sides and from above. They were possibly attacked from the past and the future too, and extra dimensions as-yet unknown.

Then a whale turned up and devoured 10,000 in one great gobful.

It was astounding television. And David Attenborough’s velvety commentary, needless to say, was flawless.

I’m loath to kick the corpse of a dead argument, but not long back there was a row about a new statue for Leicester, in which people who weren’t really paying attention imagined the choice was Gandhi or Lineker.

But if we’re going to build a statue to anyone here, shouldn’t it be Attenborough?

Meanwhile, on Coronation Street (7.30pm, ITV) Gail was taken aback to discover that David was lying about his brawl with Gary.

That’s right, Gail. David, lying. Your David, who pushed you down the stairs; who sent you hoax letters from your dead serial-killer husband; who hid ecstasy in his niece’s doll ... Him! Lying! Fancy!

Look Gail: I think it’s safer to assume that David is to blame for everything, until proved otherwise. That fight. Norris’ neck injury. The University Challenge scandal. Climate change. Gyles Brandreth. Economic meltdown. The whole damn caboodle: David’s fault.