In poll by Radio Times, wildlife series comes out on top ahead of Line of Duty, Big Little Lies and The Crown

Blue Planet II has been named the best television programme of 2017 in a poll of TV critics.

The seven-part wildlife series, narrated by Sir David Attenborough, has proved a big success for the BBC and attracted more viewers than any other programme this year.

In the poll of TV critics by the Radio Times, Blue Planet II beat the BBC police corruption drama Line of Duty and the US drama series Big Little Lies, which aired in the UK on Sky Atlantic.

The list is dominated by UK-made programmes, with the Channel 4 comedy series Catastrophe, Peter Kay’s Car Share, Broadchurch and Doctor Foster also in the top 10. The second season of The Crown, Netflix’s drama about the life of the Queen, was named the fourth best programme of the year.

Mark Frith, the editor of the Radio Times, said: “It’s been the most incredible 12 months for TV, but in the end Sir David Attenborough’s Blue Planet II won our critics poll by quite a margin.”

The programme aired across October, November and December, 16 years after the original Blue Planet was shown on the BBC. It has been sold to more than 3o countries.

The first episode featured surfing dolphins, fish that transformed from female to male and a walrus herd struggling to find blocks of ice on which to rest. It was seen by 14.1 million people in the week it was broadcast, making it the most watched programme of 2017 and the third most watched show of the past five years, behind only the football World Cup final in 2014 and last year’s Great British Bake Off final.

Blue Planet II consistently beat Strictly Come Dancing and The X Factor in the battle for weekend ratings and attracted millions of 16- to 34-year-old viewers, a key target audience for the BBC.

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The final episode of the series, Our Blue Planet, explored the challenges facing the oceans of the world, including climate change and plastic pollution. Blue Planet II featured numerous examples of human behaviour affecting wildlife, including albatrosses unwittingly feeding their chicks plastic.

Attenborough said at the launch of the series that he hoped it would encourage everyone to consider how their behaviour affected the oceans.

“What we’re going to do about a 1.5 degrees rise in the temperature of the ocean over the next 10 years, I don’t know, but we could actually do something about plastic right now,” he said.

“I just wish we would. There are so many sequences that every single one of us have been involved in – even in the most peripheral way – where we have seen tragedies happen because of the plastic in the ocean.



“We have a responsibility, every one of us. We may think we live a long way from the oceans, but we don’t. What we actually do here, and in the middle of Asia and wherever, has a direct effect on the oceans – and what the oceans do then reflects back on us.”