TV review: Attenborough: 60 Years in the Wild - Our Fragile Planet

It would be interesting to see Sir David Attenborough study and analyse the behaviour of the I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here contestants after six decades studying the natural world.

I suspect he would have more empathy with the behaviour of the animals in their natural habitats rather than the preening self importance of the third raters taking part on the ITV show.

As EastEnders star Charlie Brookes was crowned Queen of the Austrailian Jungle, beating Ashley Roberts to win the 12th series of I'm a Celebrity, the BBC2 show proved a welcome Saturday night antidote to the usual pap of Strictly and X Factor which is normally on offer.

No doubt ratings will show Celebrity trouncing virtually everything in sight but the final part of a fascinating series revisited some truly stunning work from the archives of the BBC.

Our Fragile Planet was the third in a trilogy of programmes celebrating our greatest naturalist's six decades in front of the camera. Described as a national treasure, its difficult to know whether to stuff and mount him or preserve him in aspic when he finally passes on.

Attenborough at the age of 86, looks 20 years younger and his enthusiasm for his work and his hushed, breathless style has meant he has often been lampooned by impersonators including, memorably, Rory Bremner

In this final programme he reflects on the dramatic impact that humankind has had on the natural world within his own lifetime.

He tells the surprising and deeply personal story of the changes he has seen, of the pioneering conservationists with who he has worked – and of the global revolution in attitudes towards nature that has taken place within the last six decades.

In a journey that takes him from the London Zoo back in 1954 with a programme called Zoo Quest to the jungles of Borneo with its endangered orang utans, Attenborough reveals what inspired him to become a conservationist. He remembers classic encounters with mountain gorillas, blue whales and the giant tortoise. These are all characters that have helped to change public attitudes to the natural world.

Sitting among the gorillas was perhaps his most iconic moment, a time of both beauty and extreme danger.

He was on a 60-year mission to preserve wildlife from his first days when capturing and displaying animals led to a conversion from collecting wildlife to preserving it.

It wasn't all on land. He documented how blue whales, virtually extinct through hunting, were now thriving thanks to conservation efforts from pressure groups like Greenpeace. The plight of other threatened species were also highlighted including the alarming decline in amphibians, insects, otters and rhino.

Space travel played its part, with the launch of Apollo 8 in 1968 allowing us to think globally and see the threat to the plant with views of the shrinkage to the polar ice caps becoming visible and coral reef being eroded by climate change.

From Arctic to Antarctic and Atlantic to Pacific and continent to continent, viewers are privileged to join a true great of TV on a very personal journey.

By Bill McCarthy