My first official weekend as a college student, when most of my dormmates were on their way out to their first bonafide frat party, I was settling in—for a night of watching Planet Earth. (The BBC docuseries, you know the one.)

Yes, I owned the DVD, and yes, I’d brought it with me to school, but give me some credit: I wasn’t locking myself in a room to watch it by myself. I was watching with my new roommate and a couple of girls we’d become friends with down the hall. So, somewhat social.

To be fair, we’d also invited anyone who was interested to join us. Shockingly, we didn’t get any takers, but that was their loss.

Have you ever watched a stranded baby elephant reunite with its family? It is a party.

So imagine my delight when I discovered the BBC’s 6-part sequel, Planet Earth II, is now on Netflix. I’d somehow missed it when it originally aired back in 2016 (blasphemous), so I immediately pressed play.

Planet Earth II has a 9.6/10 rating on IMDB and a 100% Rotten Tomatoes score. It’s won British Academy Television Awards and Primetime Creative Arts Emmys. It basically recommends itself, but I’ll give you my review anyway: Go watch it.

Obviously I’m a biased viewer, having chosen the first Planet Earth as a happy alternative to a party of my peers, but believe me when I say: Every second of it is fascinating. If you think you aren’t a fan of documentaries, watch it anyway. Still narrated in David Attenborough’s charming British timbre, it’s never dull and never boring. It’s dramatic and colorful, mesmerizing and unbelievable. It’s tense at times, comical at others, and perhaps the best argument ever made for saving our planet.

If there’s one difference that stands out between the original and part II (other than length; the original was a massive 11 episodes), it’s the frank explanation of how much climate change is affecting our planet. How much wildlife has been lost; how rapidly natural habitats are shrinking. The first episode, “Islands,” should be enough to get you hooked, but if you only have time to watch one, skip ahead to the end, to “Cities.” It’s a close look at the remarkable ways some animals have adapted to urban living, and a heartbreaking portrait of how others have not.

The final episode ends on a hopeful note, as most of the episodes do, but at the end of the day, the producers don’t have to try very hard to make their case. In an age when special effects teams can so convincingly transport us to another galaxy in another world, the series’ greatest asset is that—from a sudden avalanche in the North American mountains to a plague of locusts in Madagascar; from lightning bolts cracking against the desert sky to the migration of a population of crabs large enough to cover an entire island—all 360 minutes of astonishing, captivating footage are entirely real.