Wonders of the Monsoon

AKA Lands of the Monsoon, this is a 5 part BBC series on the vast regions effected by the yearly Monsoon rains. With BBC nature shows, one expects the beautiful pictures and that's what one gets here. I've never seen some of these and that's always wonderous. Worm eating worm is incredible. This series does have a lot of the human world. The fifth and last episode deals a lot of the mounting difficulties with the interactions although it ends with a hopeful wish. I'm not sure that I can agree with this wistful hope but I'm not going to rain on anybody's parade. I did learn some new stuff from this and that's always amazing. I've never considered that some islands are nutrient-poor and the consequences of that. I also never considered that Australia is one of the origins of the Monsoon. I don't think that I considered it period but if I did, it would be the ocean heating up due to the changing seasons. I didn't understand the interaction between the heat from the land and the ocean. It's always great to learn stuff when watching these nature shows.

This five part documentary series shows us how the monsoon weather system affects a swathe of countries from India all the way to Australia. It explains how the monsoon isn't just the heavy rains but the whole weather cycle, which includes periods of severe drought. We are shown how this impacts the lives of both the local populations and the varied wildlife of the area. This wildlife includes familiar creatures like Asian Elephants and Orangutans that have featured in numerous nature documentaries as well as showing us less well known creatures like a giant leach that preys on equally giant worms in Borneo and a species of from that signals with its large feet.

I really enjoyed this series; each episode showed me things that I didn't know about the way the weather effects an interesting part of the world. The makers visited a wide variety of counties, as well as several islands with unique animals. Narrator Colin Salmon does a fine job delivering his lines in a manner that keeps things interesting without ever sounding overly emotional as some narrators can at times. Each episode also included a final section about the making of the most challenging part of the episode; these are interesting snippets that give us an insight into the making of the episode... I suspect these sections may be lost if the series is shown on channels that include adverts. Overall a really interesting documentary about how the monsoons effect so many lives; both human and animal.