Frozen Planet II: a ‘spectacular’ return to the world’s cold places

“It’s 11 years since our minds were collectively blown by Frozen Planet,” said Fiona Sturges in the Financial Times. Now it is back for a second series, and it “bears all the hallmarks of another dazzling David Attenborough/BBC operation”.

Where the first series explored the Arctic and Antarctic, this one deploys cutting-edge satellite and drone technology to investigate non-polar frozen habitats, from high mountain ranges to ice-covered seas.

There are the usual “crowd-pleasers” – emperor penguins and polar bear cubs – but also more rarely spotted animals, such as the Himalayan Pallas’s cat, which looks like a domestic cat, only “fluffier and grumpier”. The series “sounds the alarm” on the risks posed by climate change, “but even the impending apocalypse doesn’t detract from the openmouthed wonder that Frozen Planet instils”.

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If the original series was “spectacular”, said Christopher Stevens in the Daily Mail, this one is “spectacular-squared”. The footage is so “crisp and clear” that “every time I gasped, I expected to see my breath billow out in chilly clouds”. Whether you’re a child or the world’s greatest naturalist, it is sure to “amaze, astound and entertain”.

“The stark beauty of the frozen Earth” has certainly “never been better captured”, said Nick Hilton on The Independent. But it’s a spectacle that we have seen before. “Tigers and bears and whales and penguins: this feels more like a greatest hits compilation than a documentary that has something new, and pressing, to say.”