Ah! I only just spotted on the IMDb that this actually came from a novel by Anthony Schaffer which explains a lot … had I known this I might’ve watched it even sooner than I have knowing it features Hayley Mills, albeit in a role so small her opening credit bizarrely reads, “Guest starring …” lol. But hers is one of those roles that, though small in screentime, is felt overwhelmingly at all times. She’s as beautiful a presence here as she has been anywhere – I think for me it all really clicks when it cuts back to her in Forbush’s last monologue, about all living creatures relying in some way or other on others, even (and there it cuts to Mills back at home) humans. It’s such a great moment, her face just sells what could easily be quite a corny message.

Much of the film is footage of the penguins themselves and there’s a sense in which it’s almost part-documentary, the story being fairly thin on the ground and really just being this portrait of man, and quelle man in John Hurt’s performance – Forbush being the kind of guy who won’t go to Antarctica without a few cases of Krug champagne and other fineries, declaring in a radio call that the electric blanket is the last thing he’s missing in the bed department, lol. It’s an amazing performance that goes from surprisingly young and feisty for Hurt through to something bordering on madness and finally despair only to come back full circle, completely changed; the last shot of Hurt returning to Mills is so simple but at the same time absolutely beautiful. It’s definitely a movie I’ll come back to.