Life (BBC)

It is no exageration to say that I have never seen television quite as remarkable as this! The BBC are the masters of this genre and they keep outdoing themselves with every new series.

The new nature series ,'Life', narrated by David Attenborough uses state-of-the-art filming techniques to achieve a stunning look at extreme animal behaviour - Events that have never before been captured on film are presented to us in fantastic HD, superbly edited chase sequences show us real life in action and extreme close-ups of rarely seen exotic animals shown in 60fps slow motion allow us to see every detail.

This mind-blowing footage includes Komodo dragons bringing down a fully grown buffalo, cheetahs working together to kill an ostrich almost three times their size and the amazing hunting technique of a chameleon whos tongue shoots out like a missile to catch its insect prey.

What amazes me is not only are these events captured at all but they are shot with almost perfect photography - lighting, focus, movement, framing - it truly is incredible. Although I am suspicious that quite a few of action that happens takes place inside a contained environment, there are sequences that could only be taken for real in the wild and a short 'behind the scenes' piece at the end of each programme allows us to see the skill and patience of these photographers, sometimes spending several months in one position to capture just one shot.

Several new and innovative filming techniques have been used to give the programme its very highbrow and quality feel. The Gyroscopically-stabilised helicopter camera known as the Heligimbal was used to shoot the spectacular aerial shots without any camera shake, a similar technique was employed for use on a boat also. Another innovation, first used in Attenborough's previous series, Nature's Greatest Events, was the use of the FrankenCam, a motion-controlled macro camera developed for the programme by Ammonite Films which is capable of shooting extreme close-ups of tiny subjects.

Life's Executive Producer said, "We've filmed them in a compelling way – using high definition cameras with the latest remarkable technologies, like ultra-high-speed, stabilised aerials. And we wanted epic stories about major global events - but told with intimacy and strong narrative story-lines. I think we've succeeded."

I agree that they have succeeded to produce both an educational and beautiful series that I believe is the type of programming which truly justifies the licence fee!

Life is on every Monday at 9pm for the next 8 weeks.