Our Oceans is coming to Netflix on November 20th.

When Blue Planet was released early in 2001, I remember watching it on DVD and being utterly riveted and enthralled.

This ambitious eight-part documentary series, helmed by Alistair Fothergill at the BBC Natural History Unit, set the bar for what an ocean wildlife series could be.

If my understanding is correct, it was also the first big landmark series not to include David Attenborough onscreen as part of each story.

While this exclusion may have been for logistical reasons, it stuck and reached early maturity in the Planet Earth series launched in 2006.

Featuring high-end gimbal cinematography from helicopters, this series cemented the formula that has now become the standard of what is known as a blue-chip series: ambitious and entertaining, high production values, multiple short stories spanning the globe, and five to eight episodes.

Back to the ocean. In 2009, Disney Nature released Oceans, a stunning feature-length movie directed by Jacques Perrin. If you love the ocean and have not seen this, you must.

More poetic and meditative than Blue Planet, Oceans features some of the best ocean cinematography ever captured. It still tands up today as one of the most outstanding ocean wildlife documentaries ever made.

The next big ocean series to land was there BBC's Blue Planet 2 in 2017, a full sixteen years after the release of the original. Helmed by James Honeyborne and narrated by Sir David Attenborough, it blended all that had gone before with a bigger emphasis on character-led story sequences and a wonderful score from composer Hans Zimmer.

Off the success of Blue Planet 2, Netflix commissioned Freeborne Media to create the next big ocean series exclusively for their audience. Helmed by James Honeybourne and series produced by Jonathan Smith, this series will premier on Netflix on the 20th of November, featuring narration by Barack Obama.

Its going to be intriguing to see how the series is received. Reception is often determined by the global state and mood at the time of release, and whether the messaging offers hope and/or escape from current concerns.

When My Octopus Teacher launched during the pandemic, it entered a reflective world under lockdown which undountadly helped to open a broader audience to its message.

Either way, its not every day that one is gifted a dedicated ocean series of this scale and ambition to feast on. The amount of work and effort that goes into creating these series is truely staggering.

Looking forward to hearing your feedback once the series has been released. I will be posted more commentary about the series on my website, which you can bookmark here.

www.rogerhorrocks.com

‍