South Pacific
BBC2, Sunday 10 May 8:30pm - 9:30pm 1/6 - Ocean of IslandsThere's a moment early on that takes your breath away: a slow-motion shot of the back of a big wave, from underwater. That might sound unremarkable, but the curving wall of blue water with its ripples and corkscrew eddies is mesmerisingly beautiful. Why has no-one filmed this before, you wonder. (The "making-of" segment at the end provides the answer: it's incredibly difficult.) There are other memorable sequences, often with an edge of the macabre: the funnel of a cyclone viewed from space; a carnivorous caterpillar striking a fly; and a young albatross flapping desperately in the jaws of a tiger shark. The moments stand out even if it's hard to work out what the pattern of the whole is - we drift from vignette to vignette. But as a mosaic portrait of an unimaginably large ocean and its inhabitants (including the wave-drumming women of Vanuatu), this is fascinating.
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Subtitled, Widescreen, Audio-describedradiotimes
