TV REVIEW : ‘The Arctic’ for Armchair Naturalists

“The Arctic,” a 13-part series of half-hour shows beginning tonight at 8:30 on the Discovery Channel, is yet another in a long string of last-great-frontier-on-Earth documentaries.

There are a lot of contenders for the last-great-frontier title--the oceans, the Amazon, the Hollywood Tropicana nightclub, to name just a few--but “The Arctic” is a pleasant enough journey, mostly because it is well-photographed. Even so, it is hard to imagine anyone except die-hard armchair nature fans watching the full 6 1/2 hours.

The first episode, “Man’s Last Frontier,” functions as a sort of introduction/overview of the spectrum of life in this frozen land. It touches on subjects that will be amplified in other episodes--the wildlife, the indigenous population, the outsiders, the aurora borealis and so on. Nothing new here but, again, it is pretty to look at and mildly interesting.

The third episode, “Light in the Northern Sky” (since the folks in PR packaged this with the introduction show, it presumably is one of the stronger episodes), focuses on the varied phenomena that play in the Northern atmosphere, things like halos, rings, coronas, mirages, “sun dogs” and--the biggie--the aurora borealis. There’s nothing new here but . . . well, you get the idea.

“The Arctic” also will air Saturdays at 5:30 p.m. and Sundays at 11:30 a.m.