I’m not what anyone would call a patriot. I don’t believe I’m anything special because I was born in Britain, nor do I believe that Britain is particularly special because I live in it. That said, there are a lot of things that make me glad that I’m British. We know how to make good tea, we’ve got a pretty darn good music scene, we make a lot of the best comedy, and we get to watch David Attenborough nature documentaries.

So you’ll understand when I say that throughout this perfectly reasonable, and in places beautiful and fascinating documentary, I spent most of the time wishing that it was being narrated by David Attenborough. It’s not that Morgan Freeman did anything wrong. Or that the script-writer was all that terrible, it’s just that once you’ve seen a David Attenborough nature documentary, nothing else really seems quite right.

As I mentioned, though, this really isn’t bad. There’s some wonderful footage of the life cycle of a penguin, of the bleak Antarctic habitat and, my, the ickle baby penguins are sho, sho cuute. On the downside, there’s a strong tendency to anthropomophise their lives, and there’s one cringe-inducingly horrible moment when they put some ‘comedy’ music over some footage of penguins squabbling. It feels a bit like you’re watching a film called ‘Penguins Do The Funniest Things Pt 17′ and it almost made me give up the rest of the film as a bad job.

I’m glad I didn’t though. This is, for all its faults, a great documentary, and David Attenborough shouldn’t have a monopoly on making nature programmes, even if he is, to my eyes and ears, the best at it.

One final thing: if you don’t want to scratch out your eyes with a fork when you read that tag-line on the poster, you really should feel that way. It’s only natural.

***1/2