Snow Chick: A Penguin’s Tale review: ‘Never watch penguins on TV while sober’
Are penguins the gift that keep on giving or what? Aesthetically perfect for television - sharply delineated black on white, a flash of enlivening colour at the beak, all set against spectacularly snowy wastelands. They waddle comically when they walk, then make you gasp in awe at their sleek, streamlined beauty in the water. And they have ADORABLE babies - which is where, last night, we came in.
Snow Chick: A Penguin's Tale (BBC1) followed the fortunes of a young emperor penguin from soup to nuts - or at least from egg to first, slippery steps into adulthood. It was a "dramatised story", which is the BBC's way of saying that it's just possible a few other chicks were cut in when our hero was too busy snorting dried fish in his trailer or tooling round the red light districts in a snowmobile with his buddies to turn up for shooting. But also that it's Christmas, and none of us should get too worked up about it. I embrace this philosophy fully. That is why, when it looked like the egg - so carefully nurtured in Daddy Penguin's pouch while Mummy is off filling her belly with fish for the post-ovum months - wasn't going to hatch, I nearly spilled my Baileys, shouting: "It's Christmas! Don't give me Dead Egg! It's Christmas!" And shortly after that, when the downy chick was weakening by the hour and it looked like Mummy and her fish belly weren't going to get back in time, "Don't give me Dead Fluffball! It's Christmas! It's Christmas, you BBC bastards! "
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