Original air date: 16 April 2021
Broadcast on Apple TV+
The list below gives a closer look into what is happening during those almost 50 minutes
Selected material
Himalayas seen from India
Due to huge drop in air pollution 12 days into lockdown
Wild animals on the prowl on the streets in the big cities
A puma making itself at home on the streets of Santiago, Chile. Also notice the cameraman in the background. Not everyone was stuck indoors.
A, normally nocturnal, leopard dares go hunting during daytime
On this terrace there used to be people during daytime
Sika deer seen walking on the streets in Japan
They seem to know where they were going. A few seconds earlier they seemed to obey the traffic lights (19’10-19’16 !!) which may seem ridiculous but are probably true as they might have observed those details from people.
It is tempting to wonder why no authorities used the opportunities of closed factories to fix their filtering systems. Usually the blame for not having them replaced with new and better ones seemed to be due to the lack of opportunities. They would never dare shut them down. This was the opportunity but it seemed it went passed unused.
Reception:
Most people seemed to like it like those on ‘rotten tomatoes‘, but a few seemed skeptical. It is true that some sequences looked almost staged (the sika deer finding their original feeding grounds in the absence of tourists), but maybe that has more to do with the cameramen being so good at their jobs that they can tell how the animals will react, that is what they have to do in the wild. There had been numerous such sequences of animals venturing into people’s gardens in their absence all over the world media before this programme.