As a child I grew up watching and loving the BBC's "Walking With..." series, however Walking With Cavemen was the one entry I never got to watch on TV. I didn't even know the show existed until I saw the official book in a museum gift shop. Almost 20 years later I finally decided to check it out.
Walking With Cavemen is very different to the other shows in the series.
To begin with the show isn't narrated by Kenneth Branagh but is instead presented by Robert Winston who also appears in person to interact with the prehistoric humans, similar to the Nigel Marven specials Chased by Dinosaurs and Sea Monsters. Winston does an okay job but he lacks the adventurous energy of Nigel Marven. Photos have surfaced showing that Marven was actually originally intended to present the American version of the show which makes me wonder why he was not used to begin with.
The second big difference is that the show does not use CGI animation (aside from a few reused shots from Walking With Beasts) but instead uses actors in make-up to portray the primitive humans. This works fine for the more humanoid hominids but for the more apelike hominids the costumes look cheesy and ridiculous at best and unsettling and creepy at worst. As a result many of the early hominids have incorrect proportions and are a bit too humanlike in their movements.
Also notably missing is Benjamin Bartlett's trademark score which gave the other shows in the series their epic feel. Cavemen's score is fine enough and does it's job but lacks the same emotional punch as those of the other series.
Overall Walking With Cavemen is a decent series that's very informative but lacks the same level of production quality and feeling as the rest of the series. It feels more like a low budget spin-off than it does an official entry in the series but it's still worth checking out.
