Move over, Attenborough! Penguin Town is the cuddly nature show for our times

In times of trouble, the last thing anyone wants to see is a gory, operatic, kill-or-be-killed reminder that all life on Earth is locked in a hellish struggle for survival that, by design, they are guaranteed to lose.

You sense that Netflix understands this, too, because that’s the only logical explanation for the existence of its new wildlife show Penguin Town.

There are the Bougainvilleas, a pair of smug, married penguins who live in the suburbs and sometimes fall prey to social climbing.

The narration, too, is arguably the least awestruck voiceover you’ll ever hear on a wildlife show.

When something terrible does happen – when a penguin couple lose their eggs and split up, say – the sadness is quickly brushed away with the revelation that one of the eggs was rescued.

“I know where we can watch antelopes!” they exclaim, and bung on an Attenborough documentary, only to realise with a horrifying jolt that they’ve forgotten about the moment 45 seconds in where an alligator lunges out of nowhere and tears an antelope’s face clean off and David Attenborough sighs: “The antelope’s children are orphans now.

But are we exposed to the raging savagery of the sort that the BBC’s Dynasties served up with its scene of penguins trapped and awaiting death in a frozen gully? Thankfully, not.

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