When it comes to making documentaries about nature, BBC belongs to the top. Planet Earth, The Life of Mammals, The Blue Planet or documentaries about dinosaurs (Walking with Dinosaurs), they all have been shot beautifully. Life is the next series after Planet Earth and continues with the kind of amazing shots you’d expect. Some of them took years to prepare and it shows. It’s really a stunning series in which many species are shown.
The series is cut up in different episodes who all show a specific part of life on earth:
- Challenges of Life
- Reptiles and Amphibians
- Mammals
- Fish
- Birds
- Insects
- Hunters and Hunted
- Creatures of the Deep
- Plants
- Primates
The BBC Nature team really knows how to frame their shots and it really is beautiful to see. A lot of patience and planning was needed to get most of the shots. At the end of every episode you can see how they did parts of the shots.
The story is narrated by David Attenborough, who has been responsible for introducing the calm way of narration, which other have tried to copy, but failed. His voice has a tranquility, but also enthusiasm and wonder which makes the images even more interesting.
His voice is relaxing, just like Bob Ross used to be.
The only reason I have not scored it a 10, is that sometimes there is not enough information about a specific animal. Sometimes you would really like to know more, but then the next animal is show. There was also one shot about plant life, which was disappointing. In the making of it was shown that it was a composite shot and not completely shot on location. Even though I understand why they did it I though it didn’t fit a series like this.
To summarize though, it’s a DVD set which you can pick up immediately when you love documentaries about nature. It offers many hours of interesting and stunning footage and you’ll learn a lot about species which you might have never seen before.
Score: 9
Very cool! He is the same narrator for the Plant Earth series which I am currently on my last disk of. I think he is doing a pretty good job in this one. It’s a very good series, but the random slow motion of animals is kind of weird. In spots I understand why they did it, but others, I feel like they just wanted to use their slow motion camera.
There isn’t much information on each animal they show, sometimes I am watching and I have no idea what I’m looking at, and I wish I did. Worth a good watch though. I’ll have to check out “Life” at some point. Thank you for giving a review on it 🙂
Yes, Attenborough has been narrating BBC documentaries for a long time. He’s usually the reason i actually watch them, such an amazing voice.
I saw most of the Planet Earth series as well and really liked that too. The slow motion shots were beautiful in HD, in the one with the shark it almost looked like the water came out of the tv. If you like the Planet Earth one, than you’ll also like this. I don’t regret buying it.