Human

Okay Ella Al-Shamahi is not new to this kind of documentary - she's done a few series for the BBC since 2018.

Wat strikes me with "Human" is the dramatic repetitions. I get it, we need to fill five episodes and there is only so much to tell.

Paleoarcheology is making headway, pushed forward by recent finds. The theory, like the early humans, evolves into more refined ideas. It still remains mostly speculation and interpretation though.

The images are pleasing. Lots of shots of African "primitive" tribes as it looks. The landscape is very much connected with the story so we get to see a lot of it and it is spectacular.

It's not bad at all. Just one thing: the overly dramatic writing. At some points there are repetitions; then, there's some excessive drama and inflation even. Just read this line a couple of times: "this failed migration was a stark reminder of our fragility". Okay, but to whom? To them? That would be a rather silly way of putting it. Really, they were dead and it's not like they sent a messenger back to whence they came from, to let them know that they kind of died out. To us then? Ok let's try that. So maybe it reminded the archologists and scientists of human fragility. I bet it did. But clearly that's not the intended meaning of this line of text. It is just weird - the next bit doesn't continue to clarify that one overdramatic line. It just leaves me as the viewer hanging, wondering. And not in a good way - but I guess that's just me.

The thought occurred to me that this sounds a lot like something chatgpt would write. And I wouldn't even blame her for doing that. After all, it's five episodes she had to fill.

I felt enriched by watching this series, but also it felt like it could and perhaps should have been a lot shorter and less dramatic.

I would like to see the entire series fit in a feature of an hour - hour and a half. Without the inflated drama and repetitions. Then I would gladly have given 10 stars.

This series is a triumph of style over substance, which is to say that it's pretty poor.

Long drawn out scenes, backed with dramatic musical accompaniment, appear designed to emphasise the importance of the subject, but actually do the opposite by detracting from it. Ella Al-Shamahi's commentary is slow and boring. Clearly she is fascinated by her subject, but as a presenter she lacks any of the necessary charisma. It seems that she may be trying to copy the delivery of David Attenborough but, if this is the case, she's a dismal failure. The quite irrelevant background noise adds nothing and is wholly out of place in what claims to be a scientific series. Scenes of the presenter standing in a desert or walking through forests are equally irrelevant.

The substance of the series could easily have been covered in no more than 2 episodes; 5 is simply far too many. Having sat through the first 2, I find myself bored and falling asleep. There is undoubtedly a lot of very good science buried in the series, but that's the problem. It's buried in a vast load of overly dramatic nonsense. Whether this Is the fault of the writers, presenter, director or producer is unknown, but whoever is at fault needs to take a few lessons in how to create a first class science documentary.

I think the presenter is earnest in her slow and evocative narrative, but when paired with the annoyingly slow, repetitive and overly dramatic background music, and have this repeat every few minutes, for 50 some minutes each episode, for a total of 5 episodes, everything just drags and gets boring very fast.

I was curious to check out this series and ended up binge watching over 2 days. As yo be expected from the BBC production unit, the quality of the cinematography is breathtaking. The big discovery - beyond all the amazing factual content - is Ella Al-Shamahi, who as a presenter and educator, draws you into the world of complex paleontological research and discovery, without ever making you feel patronised.

Ella is a great find for the future of great science documentary making, and the story and her presentation - and utter excitement and glee in her specialist subject - is utterly infectious. A must watch.

Warning : I only watched 20 minutes of it then stopped.

I couldn't watch this which is annoying because I really wanted to. The style was too awful for me. Incessant and unnecessary music. Maybe this is the way the BBC does these things now. Annoying way the presenter approached the camera all the time. Her way of talking.

Go watch Civilisation to see how a documentary should be done.