Bernardo Bertolucci once bemoan- ed to me in an interview the paradox of television. Potentially the most exciting medium ever invented, it was mostly used to sell soap powder and politicians. He was probably thinking about Italy, where television pioneered the phenomenon of the stripper-housewife, as well as Silvio Berlusconi, but sometimes, as a critic, I think I know how he feels. On ITV1 on Sunday (20 November, 10.30pm), Chris Evans launched OFI Sunday (the initials stand for Oh Fuck It's) by asking his audience if it was glad or sad that British breasts were getting bigger. Having ascertained it was glad, he then introduced a film of himself chasing a couple of giant nippled balloons down a hill. It was as cutting edge as Kenny Everett circa 1985, and about as funny. I hope it sold some detergent.
But then came Wednesday's Life in the Undergrowth (9pm) and the glory of television revealed itself. What a privileged generation we are, thanks to TV: the first in the history of the planet to be really able to take a close look at the animals that share it with us. David Attenborough is pushing 80 now. Since hanging up his BBC management suit in the 1970s for a short-sleeved blue shirt, he has made landmark series about mammals, birds, sea creatures and plants. Creepy-crawlies were, understandably perhaps, left to last (or next to last, for he will make one final epic on reptiles), but the opening episode of the new series proved to be an utter, fascinating, shuddery delight. In a strange, refracted, unscientific way, all human life seemed to be here in the world of slugs and spi-ders: the fight for love and glory, sex and death, co-operation and competition - and females who bite off the heads of their suitors. Attenborough's millipedes left meerkats looking like mere cats.
You will see extraordinary nature scenes on other channels, but the words "by David Attenborough" are a guarantee that the script will make them add up to something. The argument of episode one, "Invasion of the Land", explained how the invertebrates migrated from sea to land more than 400 million years ago. Their new home left them with several problems. It was, of course, dry, so they developed shells around them to seal in their moisture. They needed to find ways to breathe. Hunting techniques had to be developed. But the greatest problem of all to be solved was reproduction. In the water, sperm swishes around eggs and fertilisation happens easily. Now sex became deliberate, competitive and risky.
"The leopard slug, you might say, is a creature of simple habits," began Attenborough, with a certain look in his eye as, anthropomorphically speaking, he followed a couple of them into the bedroom. When a leopard slug is on heat its slime begins to smell different, alerting the like-minded to what is on its mind. Its new partner follows on behind, nibbling its tail and then following it up to an overhanging branch. The two filmed creatures attached themselves upside down on a twig and began to entwine slimily. It was the most romantic thing you will ever see. Suddenly, still knotted together, they slid down a rope of mucus and began to go at it in midair. I was reminded of Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones on that rope together in Entrapment - until, I should add, long, fluorescent male organs slid out from behind each of the slugs' heads. Soon these fancy, bendy penises were cosying up and also became indivisible. In a sublime parody of their owners' bodies, they formed a bulbous, flower-like blue globe, through which the sperm from one fertilised the other's eggs and vice versa. You might call it balletic, were ballet not always so sexless. After two hours of lovemaking, the deed was done and the leopard slug's date was shrugged off to drop to the forest floor.
The real reason this series has been so long coming is that technology has only just miniaturised itself sufficiently to cope. Some of the creatures the cameras caught going about their business were smaller than a pinhead. Only recently, too, has filming in such darkness become possible. At times Attenborough's crew used infra-red cameras and heat-seeking equipment to glean nocturnal images. At others, cameras slowed down the action by 200 times, so we can see how a bee's wings actually work, for instance. These techniques were explained in a ten-minute "how-we-made-it" film. The fly-on-the- wall codas - a good joke of a title, because here fly-on-the-wall cameras film flies on walls - are there, presumably, because the BBC's co-producer, the Animal Planet channel, wants programmes that last 50 minutes to allow time for ads, but they are pretty irresistible telly, too.
In the next episode Attenborough follows insects into the air. The programme's opening mayfly sequence - in which, after two years underwater, they sprout wings and, for one day only, fly - is another Attenborough classic. Later, computer graphics bring an extinct dragonfly with the wingspan of a seagull flying out of a fossil at Harvard University. And there is rough sex, as a damsel fly scours out the genital tract of its mate to remove sperm from previous dalliances. I fear this column may lack critical distance but, as Robert Graves reluctantly concluded of Shakespeare, Attenborough is really very good - in spite of all the people who say he is very good.
Andrew Billen is a staff writer on the Times
