It is the kind of telly that makes you wish you had a bigger one, possibly even a cinema to watch it on. It is also, in contrast to much natural history programming, full of hope.
This was hypnotic, humbling, majestic television at the top of its game. By comparison anything Hollywood razzmatazz has to offer looks positively beige.
The footage is so gloriously HD by this point that it almost looks like Pixar, counter-intuitively - your brain not being used to seeing actual sea life in such a crisp, vivid, three-dimensional way.
To me, wrapped and rapt in the wrasses, or the orcas slapping herring, or the dancing surfing dolphins, or simply the tower-block waves crashing, slo-mo ethereal, off New Zealand, this, and (crucially) the story of its filming was magnificent.
Some of the most eye-popping sequences didn't involve wildlife at all, but revealed the power, majesty and beauty of breaking waves in high-definition slow-motion sequences.
