Reception
The series drew an average of 4.0 million viewers and a 16.9% audience share, down on BBC One’s average share of 24% for the same time slot in 2008. However, the Sunday evening repeats at a more family-friendly viewing time drew similar viewing figures to the first broadcast, and the episodes regularly featured in the top ten weekly chart on BBC iPlayer.
The series received almost universal praise in the British press. Writing in The Guardian of the scene in which a humpback whale swallows a shoal of herring, Lucy Mangan commented: "You can cradle your jaw safely in your lap for the rest of the evening, as you replay that moment in your mind's eye and reel at the slower but no less staggering evocation by the entire programme, the entire series, of the incredible force and fragility of it all." The sequence was also singled out by Tim Teeman in The Times, who wrote "now that was a money shot. Nature's Great Events: "The Great Feast" was no mis-sale". He went on to describe it as "the most surprising bit of television this week" and "the most mind-blowing, horrific and beautiful sequence of film". The series also gained a very favourable review in The Scotsman. Its critic Paul Whitelaw described it as "quite simply wonderful television. Visually stunning, immersive and mesmerising, it examined some of the most dramatic wildlife spectacles on Earth with characteristic verve and insight." He singled out praise for David Attenborough, noting that "even when he is merely narrating, is quite brilliant at what he does, and I defy anyone to refute that."
Matt Warman of The Daily Telegraph was complimentary about the "wealth of surprising, beautiful images", but criticised the series for its superficial treatment of environmental issues. Writing about the plight of polar bears highlighted in "The Great Melt", he commented "it was tempting to ask whether the rise of one species, man, and the decline of another could not be considered a sad part of evolution by natural selection... Nature's Great Events, however, chose not to engage with the debate."
Read more about this topic: Nature's Great Events
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