Review of Earth’s Great Rivers (2019)
Seen in 2019.
The Amazon, the Nile and the Mississippi.
There’s a fair amount of people. In the last episode, the people take the upper hand. Beautiful animals still appear and are shot with the notable skill of BBC’s Nature team, but the focus shifts to industry and cultural landscape. The most interesting shot in this final episode is of a giant barge, carrying grain through the night. Curiously, while images of flooding do appear, and both the levees and the expansion of the delta are mentioned, the narrator says the river is “naturally in a state of change”. This is an attempt to diffuse responsibility. A more sober assessment of environmental degradation would have been better, including the consequences of this degradation for the wildlife.