Return to the
frozen planet
Over a decade since Frozen Planet first aired on the BBC, the series is back, offering extraordinary new footage of life in the most extreme environments on Earth
Watch six-part series Frozen Planet II on BBC One and iPlayer.
IT TOOK OVER FOUR YEARS TO make Frozen Planet II. Executive producer Mark Brownlow shares his highlights of filming on all seven continents and across 18 countries to create a series that tells an urgent story about the effects of climate change on our world.
Frozen Planet (2011) looked at the passing of the seasons at the two poles. How does Frozen Planet II build on what came before?
I was a huge fan of the original series, but a decade has passed since it aired and we now have a far greater understanding of our frozen habitats. A decade ago we were still debating whether climate change was caused by humans or not!
This series tells the bigger story of all of our frozen worlds – which, incredibly, cover one-fifth of our planet – at a time when they’re changing faster than ever before. So, we go to the Arctic and Antarctic, but we also climb the world’s highest peaks, dive into icy lakes and enter snowbound deserts.
We celebrate the wondrous life in these fragile ice worlds, but also land the message that they are changing rapidly on our watch, with potentially profound consequences for all of humanity. We focus on a singular narrative around climate change. It’s the story of our time.
What cast of animal stars can we look forward to?
A greater diversity of locations and habitats means a very broad palate of characters. We still feature the classic ice species, such as killer whales, narwhals and polar bears, but alongside them we also include snow monkeys, pandas, Siberian tigers, Pallas’s cats and Amur leopards.
There are also wondrous stories of little animals, such as the Lapland bumblebee, the high-casqued chameleon that lives atop Mount Kenya, and terrapins that freeze before coming back to life.
What’s your approach to storytelling?
Environmental storytelling is much more ingrained in this series. We get the audience invested in our characters, and then use them to communicate a message.
Our harp seal sequence in Greenland is a good example. Females abandon their pups at just 12 days old, having introduced them to swimming, so they can breed again. When our female leaves her youngster – alone on a small ice floe in the middle of freezing nowhere – you’re emotionally engaged. Then we reveal the difficult truth: due to climate change, storms are more frequent and the ice is thinning, which means many pups are being blown into the water before they are properly able to cope. It’s heartbreaking.
What other examples are there of species being affected by climate change?
Bowhead whales in the Arctic Ocean were once protected from killer whales in summer by a barrier of sea ice, so they could go about luxuriating in their spas – they rub against boulders to remove dead skin and parasites – and having a jolly old time. But now the summer sea ice is breaking up, the killers have a free ride to the whales.
There’s also wandering albatrosses on the Antipodes Islands. The population is already shrinking due to a warming ocean, and the sex ratio is skewed due to the females’ tendency to travel further to feed than males and get hooked by longlines. Without enough females to go round, the males are pairing up with other males – it seems they prefer the company of a member of the same sex to life alone. It’s quite moving.
Light relief is important in a series like this. How do you create that?
There is plenty of comedy. In the breeding season, male hooded seals expand their left nasal passages into bright red balloons and wave them around to win mates – a bizarre adaptation, and we have some fun with that.
We also have the roly-poly walruses on Svalbard. Walruses haul out in the summer in a big huddle, and we capture a particularly large male pushing his way into the centre of the throng, with childish burps and farts. When he inevitably gets too hot – and summer temperatures on Svalbard can now reach 22˚C – he needs to get back to the sea, which he does by rolling down the slope. It’s very comical.
Do you use comedy to drive an environmental message?
Absolutely – the chinstrap penguin sequence is a good example. These are loveable characters that offer all the fun of stonestealing (to build high-rise nests). Stonestealing featured in Frozen Planet, but the series didn’t explain that the chicks need to stay off the sodden ground to avoid their downy fur getting saturated by meltwater.
With the Antarctic warming so quickly, there is now so much meltwater that the chicks can’t avoid it – and hypothermia. The sequence encapsulates both comedy and tragedy and, for me, defines the series.
What’s a standout filming first?
Golden eagles hunting chamois in the Alps. We teamed up with a French crew and secured an epic sequence. Young in the nest need a lot of meat, and a chamois calf is a substantial prey item. The birds hunt as a pair: one flushes the herd and scatters the animals; the second locates and targets a calf that’s become lost in the panic. To kill it, it flies out over the precipice, clutching the prey in its talons, then lets it drop. It’s incredible drama.
But the finale comes in autumn, when the calves have dispersed and the eagles have no choice but to hunt the adults. An extraordinary drama unfolds where an eagle tackles a fully grown chamois and attempts to haul it over the cliff edge.
Did technology offer new perspectives?
Drones were key – we used them throughout the series to capture events in a whole new way. We used specialist high-speed ‘racer drones’ to overtake an avalanche, for instance, then fly at 150kph beside it, and we reveal the coordinated hunting strategy of killer whales from the air. Even a sequence of ‘dancing’ polar bears is captured in its full glory by using a drone.
How do you show the speed of change?
We did a lot of time-lapse studies – they are a fundamental part of the series. We recorded the changes that took place in the three and a half years of production by installing time-lapse cameras on the top of the Greenland ice cap, in Antarctica, on top of the Quelccaya ice cap in the Andes, and in the New Zealand Alps.
We also commandeered satellites to get large-scale views from space. We reveal, for instance, that Quelccaya ice has retreated by nearly 60m.
These time-lapse studies were a huge endeavour. To download the card and recharge the battery on the camera on Quelccaya, at 5,500m, required 10 days just to acclimatise to the altitude!
Some time lapses cover a longer time period. For instance, we worked with a scientist who has aerial photographs of the Alps taken 10 years ago and today, who interpolated the images to reveal how it’s changed in half a century – it’s profound.
We also look at changes in the physical landscape. Time-lapse cameras rigged on the Canadian permafrost capture the collapse of the ground itself – apocalyptic slumps as the frost thaws. Within a couple of months you can see massive, visceral differences.
Any moments of jeopardy?
I went to Antarctica to direct the killer whale shoot. We’d been on location only 15 days when one of the crew developed an infection. We steamed to a base several days away to get her urgent medical attention, then headed even further north to drop her on a cruise ship.
En route back to our location, the skipper pushed the boat so hard that it blew a gasket, leaving us on our own with no workable engine. You can’t break through sea ice on sail power alone, and any sudden change in wind direction could result in the surrounding water becoming clogged in ice. We had no choice but to spend the next three weeks sailing back to the Falklands, sometimes tacking to South Africa, sometimes tacking to Hawaii, beating against the headwind. All for two short sequences…
Just how challenging was the series in terms of access?
What makes this series different is that we’re going to such remote regions. To film hooded and harp seals in Greenland for instance, the crew had to cross from Norway to eastern Greenland, then locate the animals. As climate change had pushed things out of synch, they had to go further north than anyone had gone before. It’s really exploratory stuff – and they had just one shot at it.
Did the Covid-19 pandemic throw you a few curveballs?
Unfortunately, yes. Particularly for the crew filming the opening sequence: emperor penguin chicks in Antarctica crossing the sea ice for the first time. The team were going to be based at Atka Bay, but it was three years before they even got there.
The first year, Covid-19 hit; the second, travel restrictions were in place. In the third year, they finally flew to South Africa to get their connecting flight. But the base then requested that they quarantine in South Africa – where they subsequently contracted Covid-19. They had to spend a total of 42 days isolating, which was pretty hellish.
We thought they’d miss the narrow window of the chicks setting out, but they made it in time to tell this lovely story. The ice is always shape-shifting, so the chicks have to climb little ice hills and navigate newly opened chasms. It’s a heroic tale of battling the odds.
What was your most memorable experience on location?
Seeing wave-washing killer whales. There are only 100 of them on the planet that do this – about 50 adults and 50 juveniles – and it takes them 12 years to perfect the strategy. It’s an extraordinary thing to witness: there’s all this noise and squeaking as they coordinate the attack. They are huge, inquisitive creatures, and there was this one incredible moment when they came to check us out in our tiny rib. They command a healthy respect.
What do you want viewers to take away from the series?
How fast the frozen world is changing is a real wake-up call. Because it’s out of sight, out of mind, you sort of assume things are ticking along okay, with just a few shock stories about polar bears struggling.
But out in the field you can see the changes happening extremely fast, and that’s the shocking truth. Almost every location we visited was experiencing new temperature records. It could be the last time we witness these frozen worlds as they are.
ABOUT MARK BROWNLOW
Mark Brownlow is executive producer on Frozen Planet II. He has over 25 years of programming experience across a broad range of wildlife television documentaries, including Blue Planet II and has won Bafta and Emmy awards.
EPISODE 1
Frozen Worlds
The series starts with a whirlwind tour of the Earth’s cold habitats, from the poles to the Himalayas and Siberia, exploring why they are cold and how they are threatened by human-made climate change. Showcasing species including Emperor penguins, killer whales, Pallas’s cats and musk ox, the episode examines the ways in which these animals have adapted to the challenges of their environments.
EPISODE 2
Frozen Ocean
This episode plunges the viewer under the ice of the Arctic to meet the animals that live here. Polar bears hunt in the chilly waters, harp seals raise their pups, and a pod of beluga whales risks starvation when they get stuck in an ice hole for five months, only escaping when the sun melts the ice.
EPISODE 3
Frozen Peaks
Icy ‘islands in the sky’ are found at high altitudes on every continent and are home to a diverse range of species, from chameleons and giant pandas to golden eagles and flamingos. High-speed camera drones fly down a mountainside, capturing an avalanche – it’s the first television show to use these drones in such a way.
EPISODE 4
Frozen South
Antarctica, the most hostile environment on Earth, and one undergoing great change due to the climate crisis, is the focus of this episode. Familiar species such as chinstrap penguins appear alongside the primitive lifeforms living in a freshwater lake buried deep within the ice covering the continent’s interior.
EPISODE 5
Frozen Lands
The great Boreal forests and barren tundra in the far north of our planet are the focus, with packs of wolves tackling American bison, baby painted turtles thawing after a winter spent in suspended animation, and a Lapland bumblebee queen, sole survivor of her colony, attempting to rebuild and reproduce before winter returns.
EPISODE 6
Our Frozen Planet
We meet the scientists and other people dedicating their lives to documenting the changes taking place in Earth’s frozen regions due to humanmade climate change. Two of the ice-world species feeling these impacts most acutely are polar bears, who are being forced to come onto land to find food as ice-free summers do away with their hunting grounds; and harp seals, whose pups are tipped into the sea when storms cause sea ice to break up sooner in spring.