Almost to compensate for a total lack of winter, with spring imminent this week, here comes another one of those fascinating, indispensible nature epics so vivid and crisply shot, it brings the cold to you .
“Frozen Planet” (Discovery, 8 and 9 p.m.) is from the people who brought you the previous nature epics “Planet Earth” and “Life,” which changed the genre as we known it, or at least helped usher in the need for HD more than anything else.
Discovery, again working with the BBC, spent four years shooting the eye-opening footage at the top and bottom of the earth, following a polar bear family, comical penguins, a team of orca whales who work in teams to splash seals off their icy floats, other teams of wolves working at a pack of bison.
Overhead, on the ground, under water, you won’t know how they shot half of it (until they get to the “behind the scenes” chapter). And after a while you may think they’re making up species (whales with unicorn like spikes; day-glo anemones). With Alec Baldwin taking up the U.S. narration (overdubbing British original David Attenborough, many phrases sounds like they’re going to be a Jack Donaghy joke or narration from a cynical bank commercial. But what’s really surprising is how little of the first couple of the episodes devote to the fact that the glaciers are melting at an unprecedented pace.