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''Frozen Planet'' is a 2011 British

nature documentary A nature documentary or wildlife documentary is a genre of documentary film or series about animals, plants, or other non-human living creatures, usually concentrating on video taken in their natural habitat but also often including footage of tr ...

series, co-produced by the

BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...

...

and

The Open University The Open University (OU) is a British public research university and the largest university in the United Kingdom by number of students. The majority of the OU's undergraduate students are based in the United Kingdom and principally study off- ...

. It was filmed by the

BBC Natural History Unit The BBC Studios Natural History Unit (NHU) is a department of BBC Studios that produces television, radio and online content with a natural history or wildlife theme. It is best known for its highly regarded nature documentaries, including '' ...

. The production team, which includes executive producer

Alastair Fothergill Alastair David William Fothergill (born 10 April 1960) is a British producer of nature documentaries for television and cinema. He is the series producer of the series ''The Blue Planet'' (2001), ''Planet Earth'' (2006) and the co-director of ...

and series producer Vanessa Berlowitz, were previously responsible for the award-winning series ''

The Blue Planet ''The Blue Planet'' is a British nature documentary series created and produced by the BBC. It premiered on 12 September 2001 in the United Kingdom. It is narrated by David Attenborough. Described as "the first ever comprehensive series on the ...

'' (2001) and ''

Planet Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. While large volumes of water can be found throughout the Solar System, only Earth sustains liquid surface water. About 71% of Earth's surface ...

'' (2006), and ''Frozen Planet'' is billed as a sequel of sorts.

David Attenborough Sir David Frederick Attenborough (; born 8 May 1926) is an English broadcaster, biologist, natural historian and author. He is best known for writing and presenting, in conjunction with the BBC Natural History Unit, the nine natural histor ...

returns as narrator. It is distributed under licence by the

...
in other countries,

Discovery Channel Discovery Channel (known as The Discovery Channel from 1985 to 1995, and often referred to as simply Discovery) is an American cable channel owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, a publicly traded company run by CEO David Zaslav. , Discovery Channe ...

for North America,

ZDF ZDF (, short for Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen; ; "Second German Television") is a German public-service television broadcaster based in Mainz, Rhineland-Palatinate. It is run as an independent nonprofit institution, which was founded by all fe ...

for Germany, Antena 3 for Spain and

Skai TV Skai TV (Greek: ΣΚΑΪ) is a Greek free-to-air television network based in Piraeus. It is part of the Skai Group, one of the largest media groups in the country. It was relaunched in its present form on 1 April 2006 in the Athens metropolita ...

for Greece. The seven-part series focuses on life and the environment in both the

Arctic The Arctic ( or ) is a polar regions of Earth, polar region located at the northernmost part of Earth. The Arctic consists of the Arctic Ocean, adjacent seas, and parts of Canada (Yukon, Northwest Territories, Nunavut), Danish Realm (Greenla ...

and

Antarctic The Antarctic ( or , American English also or ; commonly ) is a polar region around Earth's South Pole, opposite the Arctic region around the North Pole. The Antarctic comprises the continent of Antarctica, the Kerguelen Plateau and other ...

. The production team were keen to film a comprehensive record of the natural history of the polar regions because

climate change In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to E ...

is affecting landforms such as

glacier A glacier (; ) is a persistent body of dense ice that is constantly moving under its own weight. A glacier forms where the accumulation of snow exceeds its Ablation#Glaciology, ablation over many years, often Century, centuries. It acquires dis ...

ice shelves An ice shelf is a large floating platform of ice that forms where a glacier or ice sheet flows down to a coastline and onto the ocean surface. Ice shelves are only found in Antarctica, Greenland, Northern Canada, and the Russian Arctic. The b ...

, and the extent of

sea ice Sea ice arises as seawater freezes. Because ice is less dense than water, it floats on the ocean's surface (as does fresh water ice, which has an even lower density). Sea ice covers about 7% of the Earth's surface and about 12% of the world's oce ...

. The series was met with critical acclaim and holds a

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

score of 91/100. Whilst the series was broadcast in full in the UK, the BBC chose to make the series' seventh episode, which focuses on

, optional for

syndication Syndication may refer to: * Broadcast syndication, where individual stations buy programs outside the network system * Print syndication, where individual newspapers or magazines license news articles, columns, or comic strips * Web syndication, ...

in order to aid sales of the show in countries where the issue is politically sensitive. The US Discovery Channel originally announced that they would air only the first six episodes of the show, but they later added the seventh episode to their schedule. In 2012, the US broadcast won four

Emmy Award The Emmy Awards, or Emmys, are an extensive range of awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international television industry. A number of annual Emmy Award ceremonies are held throughout the calendar year, each with the ...

s, including Outstanding Nonfiction Series. A sequel titled ''

Frozen Planet II ''Frozen Planet II'' is a 2022 British nature documentary series co-produced by the BBC and The Open University as a sequel to ''Frozen'' ''Planet'', which was first broadcast in 2011. The series is presented and narrated by Sir David Attenbor ...

'' began aring in September 2022, which covers more frozen habitats than just the polar regions, while also emphasizing more on the threat of climate change.

Filming

''Frozen Planet'' finished filming in 2010 and focused on the challenges facing

polar bear The polar bear (''Ursus maritimus'') is a hypercarnivorous bear whose native range lies largely within the Arctic Circle, encompassing the Arctic Ocean, its surrounding seas and surrounding land masses. It is the largest extant bear specie ...

s and

Arctic wolves The Arctic wolf (''Canis lupus arctos''), also known as the white wolf or polar wolf, is a subspecies of grey wolf native to the High Arctic tundra of Canada's Queen Elizabeth Islands, from Melville Island to Ellesmere Island.https://ecor ...

in the north and

Adelie penguin Adelie or Adélie may refer to: * Adélie Land, a claimed territory on the continent of Antarctica * Adelie Land meteorite, a meteorite discovered on December 5, 1912, in Antarctica by Francis Howard Bickerton * Adélie penguin, a species of pengui ...

s and

wandering albatross The wandering albatross, snowy albatross, white-winged albatross or goonie (''Diomedea exulans'') is a large seabird from the family Diomedeidae, which has a circumpolar range in the Southern Ocean. It was the last species of albatross to be descr ...

es in the south, although many other storylines are developed. After an introductory episode, the subsequent four episodes depict the changing seasons at the poles, before an episode focusing on mankind's activities there. The final episode, "On Thin Ice", examines how

global warming In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to E ...

is affecting the polar regions. Filmmakers worked in new locations, including Antarctica's active

volcano A volcano is a rupture in the crust of a planetary-mass object, such as Earth, that allows hot lava, volcanic ash, and gases to escape from a magma chamber below the surface. On Earth, volcanoes are most often found where tectonic plates are ...

es and the

Russian Arctic The Extreme North or Far North (russian: Крайний Север, Дальний Север) is a large part of Russia located mainly north of the Arctic Circle and boasting enormous mineral and natural resources. Its total area is about , ...

. Sequences captured include migrating

eider duck Eiders () are large seaducks in the genus ''Somateria''. The three extant species all breed in the cooler latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere. The down feathers of eider ducks, and some other ducks and geese, are used to fill pillows and quilt ...

s, footage of a

fur seal Fur seals are any of nine species of pinnipeds belonging to the subfamily Arctocephalinae in the family '' Otariidae''. They are much more closely related to sea lions than true seals, and share with them external ears (pinnae), relatively lon ...

colony from the air, and pack hunting of seals by

killer whale The orca or killer whale (''Orcinus orca'') is a toothed whale belonging to the oceanic dolphin family, of which it is the largest member. It is the only extant species in the genus ''Orcinus'' and is recognizable by its black-and-white pa ...

s. The

aerial photography Aerial photography (or airborne imagery) is the taking of photographs from an aircraft or other airborne platforms. When taking motion pictures, it is also known as aerial videography. Platforms for aerial photography include fixed-wing aircra ...

used the Cineflex and Gyron cameras pioneered on ''

'', which enable steady footage to be captured from long range without disturbing the animals. From late April to early May 2009, BBC crews were in Hay River, Northwest Territories, Canada filming the annual breakup of the river of the same name, which flows into Great Slave Lake.

Zoo-filmed material

The BBC was accused of staging after it was reported that one scene of a polar bear giving birth was filmed in a Dutch (initially reported as German) animal park. The BBC defended its faking of the shots, explaining that it would have been impossible to film the event in the wild without endangering the cubs, that the commentary was careful not to mislead the audience, and that the ''Frozen Planet'' website had already explained how the scene was captured before the story appeared in the media.

Broadcast

''Frozen Planet'' was broadcast on

BBC One BBC One is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network owned and operated by the BBC. It is the corporation's flagship network and is known for broadcasting mainstream programming, which includes BBC News television bulletins, p ...

starting 26 October 2011. Each of the first six episodes comprises the main programme followed by a 10-minute featurette called ''Freeze Frame'', which shows how some of the sequences were filmed. David Attenborough's principal role is to narrate the programmes, but he appears briefly on camera to give an introduction and a closing statement. For the seventh programme, "On Thin Ice", he serves as writer and presenter for what was billed by the BBC as a personal statement on the

effects of climate change The effects of climate change impact the physical environment, ecosystems and human societies. The environmental effects of climate change are broad and far-reaching. They affect the water cycle, oceans, sea and land ice (glaciers), sea level ...

at the poles. A special programme called "Frozen Planet: The Epic Journey" featuring re-edited highlights from the series was broadcast on BBC One on 28 December 2011. In the United States, ''Frozen Planet'' premiered on the

on 18 March 2012 with

Alec Baldwin Alexander Rae Baldwin III (born April 3, 1958) is an American actor, comedian, and producer. In his early career, Baldwin played both leading and supporting roles in a variety of films such as Tim Burton's ''Beetlejuice'' (1988), Mike Nichol ...

replacing David Attenborough as narrator of the first six episodes. The "Autumn" episode from the BBC series was replaced by "The Making of Frozen Planet", a compilation of the ''Freeze Frame'' featurettes, and the title of the sixth episode was changed from "The Last Frontier" to "Life in the Freezer". The network originally decided not to broadcast Attenborough's "On Thin Ice" episode, citing "scheduling conflicts", but later reversed their decision, and "On Thin Ice" was broadcast on

Earth Day Earth Day is an annual event on April 22 to demonstrate support for environmental protection. First held on April 22, 1970, it now includes a wide range of events coordinated globally by EarthDay.org (formerly Earth Day Network) including 1 b ...

, 22 April 2012. In Australia, the series was broadcast on the

Nine Network The Nine Network (stylised 9Network, commonly known as Channel Nine or simply Nine) is an Australian commercial free-to-air television network. It is owned by parent company Nine Entertainment and is one of five main free-to-air television netw ...

beginning on 27 October 2011. In France, the series has been acquired by France Television, and aired in March–April 2013 under the name "Terres de Glace".

Episodes

: ''All episode names from BBC website.'' ''Ratings include overnight audience shares, with consolidated viewers supplied by

BARB Barb or the BARBs or ''variation'' may refer to: People * Barb (name), a list of people and fictional characters with the given name or surname * Barb, a term used by fans of Nicki Minaj to refer to themselves * The Barbs, a band Places * Barb, ...

.''

Reception

"On Thin Ice" in the United States

Uncertainty surrounded whether the series' seventh episode, which focuses on climate change, would air in the United States, where it is a politically sensitive issue. In an interview with ''Radio Times'', Attenborough explains that "data from satellites collected over the last 40 years show a drop of 30% in the area of the Arctic sea ice at the end of each summer." Former UK

Conservative Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy that seeks to promote and to preserve traditional institutions, practices, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civilization i ...

politician Lord Lawson dismissed the idea as "alarmism", provoking a polar oceanographer working with the show to describe his criticism as "patronising", wrong and the "usual tired obfuscation and generalisation". Attenborough subsequently rebutted Lawson's allegations. This episode was initially not expected to be shown in the United States. Ten networks that would have run the episode opted out, citing fear of controversy. On 6 December 2011, the Discovery Channel announced it would air the seventh and final episode of ''Frozen Planet''. "On Thin Ice" includes on-camera shots of Attenborough, who narrates the British version, discussing what shrinking glaciers and rising temperatures mean for people and wildlife that live in the region, as well as the rest of the planet. The music for this episode was composed by Barnaby Taylor.

Ratings

The series quickly became a ratings success in the UK, with the second episode broadcast on 2 November 2011 becoming the highest-rated natural history programme there since 2001. The series drew an average audience of 8.67 million viewers.

Awards

In May 2012, ''Frozen Planet'' won in three categories at the

British Academy Television Craft Awards The British Academy Television Craft Awards is an accolade presented by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA), a charitable organisation established in 1947, which: "supports, promotes and develops the art forms of the moving imag ...

, collecting prizes for best sound, best editing, and best photography. At the

BAFTA Television Awards The BAFTA TV Awards, or British Academy Television Awards are presented in an annual award show hosted by the BAFTA. They have been awarded annually since 1955. Background The first-ever Awards, given in 1955, consisted of six categories. Until ...

, ''Frozen Planet'' was nominated for Best Specialist Factual and the YouTube Audience Award, but lost in both categories. It was also nominated for a

Royal Television Society The Royal Television Society (RTS) is a British-based educational charity for the discussion, and analysis of television in all its forms, past, present, and future. It is the oldest television society in the world. It currently has fourteen r ...

award. The US broadcast won four prizes at the Primetime Creative Arts

s in September 2012, including outstanding nonfiction series, cinematography, sound editing, and picture editing. The following month, it won in three categories at the

Wildscreen Wildscreen is a wildlife conservation charity based in Bristol, England. The charity was founded in December 1987 from a Trust law, trust which had operated since 1982, with the initial aim of encouraging and applauding excellence in the product ...

Festival in Bristol, UK, taking the Panda Awards for best sound, best cinematography, and best series, the latter shared with ''

Human Planet ''Human Planet'' is an 8-part British television documentary series. It is produced by the BBC with co-production from Discovery and BBC Worldwide. It describes the human species and its relationship with the natural world by showing the remar ...

''. In January 2013, the series won the public vote for Best Documentary Series at the UK's

National Television Awards The National Television Awards (often shortened to NTAs) is a British television awards ceremony, broadcast by the ITV network and initiated in 1995. The National Television Awards are the most prominent ceremony for which the results are voted ...

, beating out ''

Big Fat Gypsy Weddings ''Big Fat Gypsy Weddings'' is a British documentary series broadcast on Channel 4, that explored the lives and traditions of several British Traveller families as they prepared to unite one of their members in marriage. The series also feature ...

'', ''

One Born Every Minute ''One Born Every Minute'' is a British observational documentary series which shows activities taking place in the labour ward. The first series aired on Channel 4 in 2010, the second in 2011. Series 7 made its debut on 10 March 2015. Productio ...

'' and '' Planet Earth Live''.

Merchandise

DVD and Blu-ray

Three disc region-free

Blu-ray The Blu-ray Disc (BD), often known simply as Blu-ray, is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 2005 and released on June 20, 2006 worldwide. It is designed to supersede the DVD format, and capable of sto ...

and Region 2+4 DVD box sets were released on 8 December 2011, and include the complete series as broadcast in the UK, although ''On Thin Ice'' is considered a special feature on the third disc. In North America, the Blu-ray and Region 1 DVD box sets were released on 17 April 2012, and unlike the Discovery broadcast version, retained David Attenborough's original narration. They also include extra features not present on the UK discs: ''Frozen Planet: The Epic Journey'', an hour-long edited highlights, and ''Production Video Diaries'', a series of 47 video shorts made by the crew as they filmed the series.

Book

''Frozen Planet: A World Beyond Imagination'' accompanies the TV series and was released in hardcover format on 13 October 2011. It is written by the series producers Alastair Fothergill and Vanessa Berlowitz, with a foreword by David Attenborough. The UK version was published by

BBC Books BBC Books (also formerly known as BBC Publishing) is an imprint majority-owned and managed by Penguin Random House through its Ebury Publishing division. The minority shareholder is BBC Studios, the commercial subsidiary of the British Broadcasti ...

() and the North American version was published by Firefly Books ().

Open University poster

A ''Frozen Planet'' poster was produced in collaboration with and distributed for free by

. Both the

Arctic Circle The Arctic Circle is one of the two polar circles, and the most northerly of the five major circles of latitude as shown on maps of Earth. Its southern equivalent is the Antarctic Circle. The Arctic Circle marks the southernmost latitude at w ...

and

Antarctica Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean, it contains the geographic South Pole. Antarctica is the fifth-largest contine ...

are mapped. In addition, detailed profiles of the respective flora and fauna, geology and ice formations are provided as well as timelines of human exploration.

Calendar

''Frozen Planet'' wall calendars were published in the UK for 2012 (), 2013 () and 2014 ().

Soundtrack

The musical score and songs featured in the series were all composed and conducted by

George Fenton George Richard Ian Howe (born 19 October 1949), known professionally as George Fenton, is an English composer. Best known for his work writing film scores and music for television, he has received five Academy Award nominations, several Ivor No ...

, performed by the

BBC Concert Orchestra The BBC Concert Orchestra is a British concert orchestra based in London, one of the British Broadcasting Corporation's five radio orchestras. With around fifty players, it is the only one of the five BBC orchestras which is not a full-scale symp ...

, with the exception of ''On Thin Ice'', its music being composed and conducted instead by Barnaby Taylor. The soundtrack was released on 18 March 2013.

Holland America Line Holland America Line is an American-owned cruise line, a subsidiary of Carnival Corporation & plc headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States. Holland America Line was founded in Rotterdam, Netherlands, and from 1873 to 1989, it operated ...

, in partnership with

BBC Earth BBC Earth is a brand used by BBC Studios since 2009 to market and distribute the BBC's natural history content to countries other than the United Kingdom. BBC Studios is the commercial arm of the public service broadcaster. BBC Earth commercia ...

and Lincoln Center Stage, produced a series of concerts based on the BBC Earth ''Frozen Planet'' television series. "Frozen Planet in Concert" was performed featuring live musicians directed by Italian music director Sergio Prezioso, playing a specially orchestrated musical score by composer George Fenton as the images unfolded on screen.

References

External links

* *
Frozen Planet
' at

Discovery Channel Frozen Planet page

''Frozen Planet''
on the Eden website * {{BBC Natural History Unit BBC television documentaries BBC high definition shows Documentary films about nature Open University 2010s British documentary television series 2011 British television series debuts 2011 British television series endings Discovery Channel original programming Television series by BBC Studios Environment of Antarctica Arctic Documentary films about Antarctica