At the very beginning of Planet Earth II, the eminent English broadcaster and naturalist  Sir David Attenborough is perched in a hot air balloon, thousands of metres off the ground and ready to offer some equally elevated promises for the documentary series. "It's impossible not to be impressed by the sheer grandeur, and splendour, and power of the natural world," says the undiminished 90-year-old.
The sizzle reel that follows declares that the filmmakers have new ways to capture nature's complexity, plus fresh drama, all filmed closer than ever before. It sounds more like something from a Hollywood blockbuster trailer, not a documentary series from the BBC's Natural History Unit. But times have changed even in the 11 years since Planet Earth was a sterling success, and it was noticeable that one of the clips chosen to promote the six-part program quickly went viral last November.
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Things of nightmares in Planet Earth II
Sir David Attenborough terrifies audiences and social media in his long-awaited follow-up series Planet Earth II, with a chase scene between hatchling iguanas and an army of snakes.
"Iguana vs Snakes" – or as I like to call it, an accurate representation of my existential nightmares – is a masterful chase sequence where a young marine iguana tries to evade, and then outrun, a cadre of converging racer snakes. The two-minute sequence is a masterpiece of suspense and then adrenalin, with a geographic specificity most action flicks lack. The tautly edited cameras capture the movement of predators, the flexing of desperate legs, and a moment of despair. Somewhere Michael Bay is planning how to replicate it with giant robots.
The bar has been set so high, partly by their own previous works, that the team behind Planet Earth II have to go further than ever before. For the most part they succeed.
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They're certainly not kidding about closer, with one of the very first shots, of a pygmy three-toed sloth perched in a tree on a Panamanian island, suggesting you can reach out and touch the show's wild subjects. Increasingly, too, the cameras are somehow at ground level, or moving with the animals – sometimes the eye contact is unnerving.
It can also be overwhelming. The first time you see a sequence where Komodo dragons tear apart the carcass of slain prey you'll believe you haven't seen such ravenous hunger since the new batch of gold travel passes were handed around at Parliament House. The second time you might also wonder about the expressive thump of the sound effects, particularly when two of the creatures slam each other with their tails.
The show's producers have rightly received flak for some of their decisions. One sequence in Planet Earth II reuses avalanche footage from the original Planet Earth, while strapping a camera to the back of a trained golden eagle to obtain footage also reminds you that in pursuit of moments of natural wonder there are very few rules in place for nature's documentarians.
But it's hard to quibble – although parents should be aware that younger children might find some scenes confronting – when on the whole the finished episodes are so impressive.
This week's "Mountains" features graceful footage of the Nubian ibex descending mountains so steep that the only way it could have been captured was with drones. Distinctive moments such as that abound.
The only thing lacking is a more urgent message about how threatened so many of these species and their environments are. Fragility is often mentioned, but if Planet Earth II is upping the stakes in terms of post-production, surely it can also escalate the very necessary idea of conservation?
Planet Earth II is on Nine, Wednesday, 7.30pm.
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