"Frozen Planet" premieres to rave reviews

(CBS News) Discovery Channel's new series, "Frozen Planet," premiered Sunday night to excellent reviews.

The seven-part documentary series, which has been four years in the making, is narrated by actor Alec Baldwin and hosted by British naturalist David Attenborough.

Created by the same documentary team behind 2007's "Planet Earth," the series chronicles the Earth's polar regions inside the Arctic and Antarctic Circles. It explores what rising temperatures could mean for the people and wildlife living in the coldest areas of the world. Among the highlights are tiny baby polar bears, the birth of an iceberg and a caterpillar with antifreeze in its veins.

So far, critics are raving about the series. Here's a sampling of some reviews:

Wired: "The beauty is so breathtaking, so jaw-droppingly gorgeous, that you may find yourself rewinding bits of it just so you can see it again right away."

According to the Christian Science Monitor, "'Frozen Planet' will make you fall in love with north, south poles."

Newsday: "Watching a team of orcas create its own miniature tidal wave in pursuit of dinner is one of those transcendent moments that should leave you both speechless and grateful to be alive."

According to the Los Angeles Times, the documentary "is gorgeous to behold: lump-in-throat, tear-in-eye beautiful. It is the very point of such documentaries to be beautiful, of course, and not merely to honor, record and convey the awesome majesty of the natural world but also to look good on that big, expensive television set you bought yourself for Christmas."

The next episode, "Spring," will premiere this Sunday, followed by "Winter" the following week. On April 8, the Discovery Channel will air a "Making Of" episode. The series wraps on April 15 with the two-hour finale, "On Thin Ice," which examines the impact of climate change on the planet and its inhabitants.

"Frozen Planet" airs Sundays at 8 p.m. ET/PT.

Tell us: Did you watch "Frozen Planet"? What did you think?