Judd Trump defeated Neil Robertson 9-8 in last year’s final, but Ronnie O’Sullivan will also be eyeing up a second title having won in 2017. It’s a poignant and timely documentary as we gear up for COP26. Dench, who previously tracked the 4,300-mile migration of Bewick’s swans from Russia to Britain on a paramotor, is a persuasive advocate and Lumley – who stays mostly at ground level chasing around in a support vehicle – oozes support for the cause. Still there are good news stories here too (like that of the volunteers Dench drops in on, who go out in large groups to clear the beaches of the Gower Peninsula of plastic litter) and the climate messaging certainly comes through. So, try as one might, it is hard not to spend much of the film on edge, anticipating a terrible accident. At the outset, Lumley points out that, during the making of the film, Dench’s support pilot on the project, Dan Burton, died when the two of them collided mid-air.
A shadow hangs over this documentary in which Joanna Lumley follows an attempt by climate activist Sacha “the human swan” Dench, to fly 3,000 miles around Britain on a green-electricity-powered paramotor (a motorised parachute driven by a propellor strapped to the pilot’s back) to raise awareness about the climate emergency.