Blue Planet II is the greatest nature series that the BBC has ever produced.

It is almost transcendentally good—the product of a team that, after six decades of experience, is now at the height of its powers. The Blue Planet II crew traveled to 39 countries to capture over 6,000 hours of footage. They stuck their cameras into coral crevices. They hung off speedboats to film dolphins rocketing behind them. They literally stared into the abyss—and then repeatedly entered it. The resulting episodes, each narrated by David Attenborough in his trademark velvety tones, are hour-long distillations of wonder, featuring sequences that would be breathtaking had earlier shots left you with any breath to take away.

Consider the octopus from the “Green Seas” episode. As it goes about its business, ambushing wayward crabs and hiding in crevices, it becomes suddenly menaced by a pyjama shark—a small and slender predator that yanks it out of its hidey-hole. The two tussle. Even though the octopus finds itself at the wrong end of a shark, it manages to escape by—and major spoiler alert—slipping an arm into the shark’s gill slits to prevent it from breathing. It is released but now finds itself in open water, patrolled by more pyjama sharks. So—and again, spoiler warning—it grabs nearby shells with its suckers and arranges them into a protective dome. As a shark investigates, the octopus explodes out of its ersatz armor, and jets to safety.

Such behavior has never been witnessed by either TV audiences or scientists, and it is as thrilling a bit of television as exists. Here is a fight scene brought to you by millions of years of evolution, and weeks of stakeouts by ever-patient camera-people. It has drama, a plucky underdog (underpus?), and a twist ending.

That I included spoiler warnings for a nature documentary is telling. They are warranted, and often demanded by audiences. And they reflect that wildlife shows have gone far beyond stately theses (think early David Attenborough) or brash showboating (think Steve Irwin). They are now blockbuster events. They have plots that audiences care about not knowing beforehand. They come with trailers, posters, merchandise and, as in the case of Blue Planet II, a Hans Zimmer score. In showing nature’s spectacles, they have become spectacles in themselves.

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This trend began, ironically enough, with the original Blue Planet series in 2001. It was the brainchild of filmmaker Alastair Fothergill, then the youngest-ever director of the NHU. He somehow convinced the BBC to spend $10 million on a seven-year shoot, making The Blue Planet the most expensive natural-history series thus far created. The investment paid off. Over 12 million people tuned in to watch orcas running down a gray-whale mother and her calf; newly discovered species like the dumbo octopus with its earlike head flaps; and the now-obligatory sequences in which schools of small fish get obliterated by a sequence of predators—marlin, tuna, dolphins, birds, and as if that wasn’t enough, a whale.