Date: Friday, 27th October, BBC 2 @ 9pm
Review from the Daily Telegraph
For those of us who know far too little about the volcanic islands off the coast of Ecuador, Galapagos (BBC2, Fri) was a revelation. Living up to the high standards of natural-history camerawork, this had a painterly beauty, but its defining character was the narration of Tilda Swinton, which treated the words as if they were poetry and gave the whole film a haunting feel."Where the volcano meets the sea, dragons stir,'' Swinton said with perfect diction as the world's only marine iguana dived from the cliffs into turbulent sea. Landlubbers when their ancestors arrived, they now swim down 30 feet to eat algae and, on their way back, they have to fight off a load of seals who want to play (not now!). This documentary also showed that geography is not a dusty thing of latitudes and isobars, but the study of a profound mystery. On the ocean bed a tunnel to the earth's core spouts volcanic lava that forms a never-ending supply of Galapagos Islands, which travel 100 miles in three and a half million years on a tectonic plate before crumbling away.
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