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[title]Veering from sublime wonder to slapstick idiocy, sometimes in the same shot, Daniel Dencik’s remarkable documentary offers yet another reason to say ‘Tak’ to Danish television. Dencik tags along as a team of scientists and artists venture to north-east Greenland on a three-mast schooner to observe the impact of melting ice on the landscape and its occupants.
For all the occasional pratfalls (a near-disastrous tumble on the ice, confusing the carcass of a musk ox for a polar bear), their mission is deadly serious, exposing both the realities of climate change and how art and science – equally important, in their very different ways – can work together for the common good. The photography is frequently astounding and their observations by turns bathetic and profound. For polar antics on the other side of the world, there’s also ‘Penguin: Spy in the Huddle’ at 9pm on BBC1.