Television documentary looks at our planet’s polar regions in winter

Natural History

The coolest show on prime time

(Ian McCarthy/Discovery Channel/BBC) - King penguins silhouetted at dawn, South Georgia. The king penguin is the second largest species of penguin, weighing up to 35lbs. They eat small fish - mainly lanternfish and squid, and repeatedly dive to more than 100 metres to find lunch. There are an estimated 2.23 million pairs of king penguins with numbers increasing.

“Frozen Planet,” Discovery Channel

Kick back, flick on the television and enjoy the majestic natural beauty and serenity of one of the most uncomfortable environments on Earth. In “Frozen Planet,” a seven-part miniseries airing on the Discovery Channel, the documentary team behind “Planet Earth” delivers a look at our planet’s polar regions. This week’s episode, “Winter,” captures the efforts of creatures to survive in the coldest region of the world during the coldest time of the year — when temperatures plummet to 70 below zero. In the Antarctic, emperor penguins struggle to keep their eggs warm. In the Arctic, polar bears dig shallow burrows to shelter themselves from the elements. In the polar oceans, getting down below the ice and out of the wind is no promise of safety. Here, when sea ice forms, it creates “brinicles” — icy stalactites that descend from the surface to the ocean bottom, freezing any organisms that they come in contact with. (An eerie time-lapse sequence shows one engulfing hapless starfish and sea urchins on the ocean floor.) Each episode of the series premieres at 8 p.m. Sunday and is repeated at various times during the week; see schedule at www.dsc.discovery.
com.

Paleontology

The king of the jungle

“Titanoboa: Monster Snake,” Smithsonian Channel

And while you’re in front of the TV, how about a really, really big snake? “Titanoboa: Monster Snake” makes its debut on the Smithsonian Channel Sunday at 8 p.m. (Yes, it’s the same time as “Frozen Planet”; it will be repeated at 11 p.m. Sunday and 6 p.m. Monday.) In the documentary, scientists describe excavating 58-million-year-old remains of the largest serpent known to have existed on Earth, Titanboa (“titanic boa”), which slithered around northern Colombia after the demise of the dinosaurs. Using a couple of softball-size vertebra and, eventually, the remains of the beast’s skull, scientists extrapolate the creature back into virtual existence, using computers to generate a B-movie-worthy animation and, freakier still, a life-size model depicting the animal swallowing a crocodile. (The model, on display last week at New York’s Grand Central Station, is moving this week to National Museum of Natural History in Washington, which will show the film on March 28.) At 48 feet, this is a seriously big snake. But the ancient swamps teemed with jumbo-size life, including turtles with shells twice the size of manhole covers. Titanoboa ate them for lunch.

— Aaron Leitko