john-1405

Visually excellent and top entertainment, certainly not a documentary. Like many BBC so-called documentaries, this has ridiculously pompous sweeping emotive music ( I thought it was silent in space?) which ruins it for me. It purports to show footage from all the probes, but it's nearly all CGI, which is OK up to a point, apart from when we see a probe sweeping across Jupiter filmed by a non-existent companion probe, that just happens to be there with a camera. Please, just indicate what is original footage and what is CGI, with maybe a small symbol in one corner. Is that too much to ask for? And as an academic Cox knows about the importance of, and difference between, first and secondary sources, video included. Nobody seems to care any more. But lots of interesting stuff if you simply lie back, turn off your critical faculties, and give in to the lush experience.

I've listened to and watched David Attenborough for decades, and every series in the last few years has been wonderful visually, taking us to places on our planet that we could never hope to visit and experience. I love Attenborough's voice too. But..it is spoiled by the droning, almost constant banal orchestral strings, wearing me out while watching. Add to that, the dramatic music when a shoal of fish gets attacked is straight from dramas when a SWAT team moves in. Ambient sound is best, but I don't mind some created sound effects like swooshing water, but a crashing booming thud when a tiny lifeform grabs some prey is ridiculous. So, sometimes it's just subtitles for me.

It started off Ok with a decent prosecutor trying to redeem a terrible event in his legal life by informally investigating a case related to his family, to avoid another miscarriage of justice.. He starts as a sympathetic character, I suppose, but ends up one-dimensional. After that nothing was believable, and none of the various characters convinced. Just going through the motions. I watched this on Channel 4 Walter Presents, and all the recent French offerings have been poor. Nice scenery, a plot that promises more than it produces, and who cares really? I wanted to be engaged with at least one of the characters, but no, none of them drew me in, so I didn't care who did what to whom. Disappointing.