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Chris Packham: 7.7 Billion People and Counting, review - this eco polemic had a severe lack of focus

Chris Packham in Lagos, Nigeria - WARNING: Use of this copyright image is subject to the terms of use of BBC Pictures' Digital Picture
Chris Packham in Lagos, Nigeria - WARNING: Use of this copyright image is subject to the terms of use of BBC Pictures' Digital Picture

Chris Packham is often described as the new David Attenborough, so it was an enticing prospect when the BBC’s two foremost naturalists sat down together for a chat in Chris Packham: 7.7 Billion People and Counting (BBC Two). Sadly, like much of this somewhat scattergun film, it didn’t prove terribly instructive.

This one-off documentary found Packham investigating the impact that our burgeoning population is having on the planet. Can the Earth sustain the UN’s predictions of 10 billion people by 2050? Are humanity’s ever-increasing numbers a threat to our own survival?

Packham travelled the globe in search of answers, starting in Brazil. He saw how the sprawling megacity of São Paulo  (five times the size of London, frighteningly) was running out of water, with communities digging their own wells and experiencing “drought riots” when the supply dried up.

In Nigeria, set to overtake the US by becoming the third most populous nation by 2050, he visited the stilt houses in Lagos lagoon (“Welcome white man!” sang a sweet gang of children) and an all-girls school determined to help bring down the birth rate by educating pupils in family planning and sending them off to university. Nothing delays childbirth like it, we were told.

He examined the impact of China’s “one child” policy, heard about forced sterilisations in India during the mid-Seventies, met a couple struggling to get pregnant through IVF and visited a subterranean urban farm in a former London air-raid shelter.

Chris Packham in Lagos, Nigeria 
Chris Packham at the stilt houses of Lagos, Nigeria

There were interviews with copious experts and a barrage of scary statistics. Packham tried to personalise his journey by discussing future generations with his 23-year-old stepdaughter and the impact of an ageing population with his 86-year-old father. Neither conversation really went anywhere. Nor did Packham’s rather random admission that he owns 10 vacuum cleaners.

Then came that chat over coffee with Attenborough - like Packham, a patron of charity Population Matters. Yes, the elder statesman was just as worried. No, he didn’t have any answers either. Population control can be a contentious subject and everyone here seemed to be skirting around it.

I’m probably sounding more negative about this programme than I might because Packham is usually much better than this. He is always engaging, enlightening company and one of the most unique voices on air, as he’ll doubtless prove once again on Winterwatch when it returns next week. He grew impassioned at times, coming close to tears as he quoted William Blake’s Auguries of Innocence and pondered why mankind was “vandalising” the planet.

This was made by the same team as his award-winning 2017 film Asperger’s & Me, but lacked its narrative focus. The topic gradually strayed away from population and onto consumerism, before ending up as an all-too-familiar eco polemic. There was also a whiff of hypocrisy as our host waxed lyrical about carbon emissions while flying on planes and helicopters.

“There is no planet B and this one is beautiful,” Packham concluded. “It is you who have to act now.” It was a microcosm of the documentary overall: bigger on vague sentiment than specifics.