Expectations are pretty high for the BBC's Planet Earth II, which premiered its first episodes over in the U.K. on Sunday. Fans in the U.S. won't get the second installation of the popular franchise until January, but luckily there's some footage online that will hopefully get you excited about the new episodes while you wait. One of these epic segments is the mesmerizing story of the snakes who preyed on some unsuspecting iguanas and the wily ways the iguanas were able to escape their wrath. You couldn't script this if you tried. Give it a watch, below.
The early part of the video features iguanas running from a slew of snakes. The shots are impressive, and slowed down so that we can see the iguanas' nimble ability to jump, along with the snakes' rapid movements and teamwork. David Attenborough's narration kicks in somewhere in the middle, where he explains the snakes don't have very good vision, but they can detect movement. Once the lizards get moving, the chase is on. Catching the iguana permanently isn't as easy as it looks, however.
This shouldn't be so fascinating, but I was unable to tear my eyes away for quite some time. It helps that the soundtrack, production quality and narration on this are all very good, mirroring some of the other footage we've seen from the BBC series so far. We also know that Planet Earth II is going to feature footage from the Galopagos and even an adorable swimming sloth, the likes of which probably has Kristen Bell pretty obsessed. (She has a thing for sloths if you somehow missed that a few years ago.) Just look at this cute little guy.
Planet Earth II currently airs on Sunday nights at 16:15 on the BBC and by the premiere numbers---which swelled over 9 million in total--it looks like people will be watching in the coming weeks. For a taste of what else is to come, you can catch the full trailer for Planet Earth 2 here.
New episodes are expected to hit the schedule in the States starting on January 28, 2017 and those episodes will air on BBC America. It's annoying when we have to wait for BBC programming to make it to the States, but in this case, the episodes look to be well worth it. To find out what else is premiere this winter, give our midseason TV premiere schedule a once-over.
