Iguana versus the snakes: The greatest TV moment ever!

And you thought The Battle of the Bastards was telly at its enthralling best. Or perhaps the faceoff between genius chemist/fallen family man Walter White and drug kingpin/fast-food entrepreneur Gus Fring rocked your television boat. Well I hate to burst your fiction fuelled bubble but if you haven’t seen the ‘iguana versus the snakes’ chase off from Planet Earth II documentary series than you are missing out on arguably the greatest TV scene ever.

Take the best cinematic chase sequence you have ever watched, multiply it by a thousand and you’re still nowhere near the sheer entrancement of experiencing the little iguana hatchling being chased down by a swarm of hungry racer snakes on the Galapagos Islands.

Set to an eerily anxious score from Academy Award winner Hans Zimmer and Sir David Attenborough’s soothingly gruff narration The clip, from the BBC’s premiere episode of Planet Earth II, has totally broken the internet.

In this standout scene of the show, a cute little baby lizard, just hatched, starts its run – doing his best impression of a Usain Bolt/Lionel Messi hybrid – as a gang of serpents emerge. The whole sequence plays out like how George Miller might track Tom Hardy fleeing apocalyptic gearheads through the deserts of Mad Max, with a couple of nerve-racking cliff-hangers thrown in for good measure. But as long as you are ‘Team Iguana’, I promise you a happy ending.

A social media acquaintance was so captivated rooting for the little guy that she likened the whole scene to viewers’ backing for Danny when he enters the hedge maze in Stanley Kubrick’s horror masterpiece The Shining. Another fellow affiliate of the Twitterati recommends the Bond producers to look no further than the daring iguana to replace the current 007 Daniel Craig.

https://twitter.com/TOMSHARMANWEB/status/795361906970230785

I rooted for this guy the same way I rooted for Danny when he entered hedge maze in the shining. RUNNN! RUNNN OH MY GOD RUNN.Snakes are hell https://t.co/BZhFq9NGKe

— Small Town Intellectual (@Zaishe57) November 7, 2016

At the end of the day, @andy_murray is number 1 and that iguana escaped the snakes! You win some you lose some. #PlanetEarth #trumpwins 😂😂

— 𝐂𝐚𝐦𝐦𝐲 𝐁𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐞𝐬 (@iamcammybarnes) November 9, 2016

The #planetearth2 clip of the iguana and the snakes is possibly the most intense TV chase of all time. > Bond and Bourne put together.

— Joe Lipscombe (@joelipscombe) November 8, 2016

Shot over 2,089 days in over 40 different countries, the six- part series kicked off with bang this Sunday, there’s something primal about the whole sequence that really sets your pulse racing. It’s a fist pump to skill and survival and in a snake-eat-iguana world, with a little ability and determination sometimes you do make it to the top of the cliff.

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