There’s no denying that penguins are the cutest of the birds, especially the fluffy chicks like the one you can see in the above image. So when I tuned into Nat Geo’s new series Secrets of the Penguins, I was expecting three episodes of adorable footage and some interesting factors. What I wasn’t expecting was the most gripping drama of 2025 so far.
Secrets of the Penguins is the latest entry in National Geographic’s Secrets of series after whales, octopi and elephants, narrated by Blake Lively and starring roving Nat Geo presenter Bertie Gregory. It airs on Sunday, April 20, and here’s how to watch Secrets of the Penguins for air dates and streaming times in various countries.
Ahead of the show’s release, I watched the first episode, called “Heart of the Emperors”, about emperor penguins living in one of the coldest places on Earth: Antarctica.
The lion’s (penguin’s?) share of the episode shows us the experiences of parent penguins finding a mate, laying an egg and protecting it during the incubation, but the beginning and end of the series follows a story that was surprisingly gripping and dramatic (slight spoilers ensue, for as much as you can spoil a nature doc!).
These segments follow a large group of juvenile penguins, undertaking their first voyage to the ocean for food without their parents. They’re trailed by presenter and producer Bertie Gregory, who investigates their trip and captures most of the footage of it.
Here’s where the show diverts from being a puff piece on how cute penguins are, to being a real-life recreation of Lord of the Flies; Lord of the Can’t Fly, perhaps!
We immediately begin by seeing a tiny orphaned chick wandering around looking for its parents; with its lost waddling breaking your heart in the show’s first few minutes. During the ensuing trip, you know in the back of your mind that this runt of the litter can’t survive; we watch as other chicks die from the storm, get abandoned after an inopportune crossing of unexpectedly-melted ice, and then go the wrong direction in a disaster in the making.
No, I won’t tell you what happens to our original chick, or all the rest of them; only that it ends with a scene that made me laugh with joy at how cathartic it was and how daft the animals looked.
We’ve all seen nature documentaries, and so we know that cute animals like this aren’t protected by plot armor. They could die at any minute! And some of the penguins do! I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen as I was waiting to see whether the tiny chick (and the rest of his cohort) would survive.
This is the exact kind of gripping drama I want from my TV; Netflix can eat its heart out if it thinks it’s made anything close in the last few years! Who needs to wait for A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms if there’s already brutality and death already on our screens?
I’ve only seen the first of the episodes of Secrets of the Penguins, but I don’t doubt that the others are just as fascinating as this one, judging by promotional material for the show. There’s a good chance it’ll end up being the second show of 2025 that I actually finish, and I can’t recommend it enough for people looking for their next TV show binge.
Secrets of the Penguins streams on Nat Geo on Sunday, April 20 in the US and on Nat Geo Wild on Tuesday, April 22 in the UK. Here’s more info about how to watch the show.