Frozen Planet

The Arctic and Antarctic are the greatest and least known wildernesses, ice worlds inhabited by the toughest creatures on earth. The sun shines on the North Pole again after six months of darkness. Further south, the tree-line marks the start of the Taiga forest, containing one third of all trees on earth.

In high summer in the polar regions the sun never sets. Summer is a tough time for the polar bear family as their ice world melts away and the cubs take their first swimming lesson. But summer also brings surprises as a huge colony of 400,000 king penguins cope with an unlikely problem - heat.

For the animals of the polar regions, autumn means dramatic battles and epic journeys. Polar bears gather in large numbers on the Arctic coast as they wait for the return of the ice. Inland, the tundra undergoes a dramatic transformation from green to fiery red.