See ‘Life on Our Planet’ With These Stunning Nature Docuseries (VIDEO)
For a show titled Life on Our Planet, the new docuseries debuting on Netflix on October 25 certainly dwells on death a lot. The filmmakers focus on five extinction events in Earth’s tumultuous history, using Hollywood-level visual effects to depict those cataclysms.
“When we started Life on Our Planet in 2017, we thought, what a positive series to be working on: The story of life! The greatest story of nature!” producer Dan Tapster told Vanity Fair last month. “Little did we know that actually, the flip side to the story of life is the story of extinction. It’s the thing that allows evolution to work because it knocks out all of these other species. Suddenly, there are all these gaps for other animals, other creatures, to evolve into and take over.”
And Life on Our Planet — detailed more below — is just the latest in a long line of big-budget nature docuseries. Here are others that bring the whole planet into your living room.
The Blue Planet & Blue Planet II
Sir David Attenborough narrated both installments of this BBC production. The first series, which premiered in 2001, was billed as “the first complete and comprehensive portrait of the whole ocean system,” and its sequel arrived in 2017. In this clip, observe how a cuttlefish changes the color of its skin to mesmerize a hapless crab — interrupted briefly by a passing shark.
Frozen Planet & Frozen Planet II
This BBC series about life at the poles proved polarizing: The first Frozen Planet aired in 2011, when climate change was still so controversial that some networks chose not to air the episode “On Thin Ice.” Frozen Planet II, which aired last year, put an even bigger focus on the intensifying global crisis, with Attenborough providing a rallying call to viewers.
The Green Planet
The filmmakers of this 2022 BBC series developed a new camera rig, nicknamed the Triffid, to capture time-lapse photography of plant life in action. See the results in this video, in which a water lily swings around a bud to clear space for a leaf that will eventually grow to be two meters across and crush its competition on the water surface. “It’s a monster,” Attenborough quips.
Life on Our Planet
From an all-star team that includes executive producer Steven Spielberg, VFX powerhouse Industrial Light & Magic, and narrator Morgan Freeman, this eight-episode series will show how — even with the 20 million species on Earth at present — 99 percent of the planet’s inhabitants throughout history have lost the epic fight for survival.
Our Planet & Our Planet II
With the eight-episode first installment hitting Netflix in 2019 and four more episodes streaming four years later, Our Planet and its follow-up examine the impact of climate change on the natural world — and the efforts of conservationists to protect it. In this episode, for instance, Attenborough describes how Przewalski’s horse — extinct in the wild only a half-century ago — is making a comeback.
A Perfect Planet
Another BBC–Attenborough collaboration, this 2021 series involved a crew of more than 200 people capturing 3,000 hours of footage in 31 countries across six continents. “Oceans, sunlight, weather, and volcanoes — together these powerful yet fragile forces allow life to flourish in astonishing diversity,” Attenborough says in an introduction to the series. “They make Earth truly unique — a perfect planet. Our planet is one in a billion, a world teeming with life. But now, a new dominant force is changing the face of Earth: humans.”
Planet Earth & Planet Earth II & Planet Earth III
These popular BBC series have aired three chapters so far, the first two of which aired in 2006 and 2016, and the third kicked off on October 22. Planet Earth III continues the mission of chronicling the world’s ever-changing habitats and includes the improbable footage, seen here, of a rhino traversing a busy street in Sauraha, Nepal. “This rhino is not lost,” Attenborough tells us. “He’s on a journey to find food. But to get to it, he must travel through a new and alien world.”
Prehistoric Planet
With visuals from Moving Picture Company (the same VFX house behind the photorealistic Jungle Book and Lion King remakes), this Apple TV+ production takes viewers back to the Cretaceous Period to show life when dinosaurs ruled the world. And the series, which has aired two seasons so far, reflects up-to-date paleontological research — with a juvenile T. rex boasting downy feathers, for example.
Seven Worlds, One Planet
This 2019 BBC docuseries focuses on one continent per episode, with Attenborough explaining how each landmass and its lifeforms evolved after the split of Pangaea. In this clip, a mother black bear takes her cubs on a crab-hunting expedition… before an adult male stakes his claim.
Life on Our Planet, Series Premiere, Wednesday, October 25, Netflix
