Life on Our Planet

So yeah..its poor timing. But i thought Netflix was pointing me at a show I had just finished watching. But no. It is different.

This show..is amazing. With amazing voice over and amazing animation...at least until they move. THen it gets a little wonky..but still not bad.

My only complaint...and its a big one. IS that I absolutely hate the fabled story telling sections. This catbird species's males danced together for male dominance..and then they continue that trend, talking about how it probably did this and probably did that. But they don't say probably. They show and say with certainty that these fabled stories happened.

That was my biggest complaint with the previous morgan freeman documentary..the forced storytelling. Its such a lame device.

And i had just seen the same octopus male pretending to be a female at least twice before this. And it is even the same footage.

It's visually beautiful and since Spielberg's name is attached to this series you can expect a visual spectacular which it is.

I loved every episode and as much as some complain the going back and forth during episodes to illustrate time periods this non linear change didn't bother me at all.

My only complaint..... I was expecting the full story of the human species just like they talked about every other species but they didn't it was like as if it was a second thought or ran out of time or funding. It was a very disappointing end to say the least. The final episode barely had 20 minutes of human species discussion.

I was left wanting more and there for was disappointed. But besides that it is a good documentary. Morgan Freeman as usual is a legend narrator.

Excellent narration ! The way they explains about evolution of life was incredible. Especially the visuals was quite realistic. By this series, we could understand how Nature is acting as creator as well as destroyer. This was one of my favourite series ever ! The introduction of every new species was fantastic, especially the way they explained about the great mass extinctions occurred till now on our planet was mind blowing and stunning. Each and everyone in the planet must watch this series as soon as possible and this may create a awareness of saving our planet from upcoming mass extinction.

While comparison to both "Walking with Dinosaurs" and "Prehistoric Planet" is unavoidable it isn't the most fair way to judge a show. Both of the aforementioned shows are the cream of the crop of prehistoric documentary series and at least one of them also holds a fair bit of nostalgia for a lot of people (me included). It is unavoidable that in at least some ways any prehistoric documentary series would fall short if held to such high expectations. Being worse than those shows doesn't automatically make a show bad.

With that out of the way, let's actually try to review this series in an as objective way as possible.

First off, visuals and sound design. They're good, great even. The CGI could have been better but is still more than adequate. The animation is a bit floaty on occasion and if you really pay attention to it it will slightly break the immersion. I find the soundtrack to be great, it doesn't bother me or pull me away from the action and on at least a couple occasions I was actively appreceating it. Animal and surrounding sounds are fine, nothing stood out to me as bad, which is really all it needs to do. I also really like Morgan Freeman as a narrator.

The storytelling choices leave me a bit puzzled though. First of all, there is the addition of modern filmed documentary bits, which to me feel really unnecessary. They could have just made 30 minute episodes instead of padding the runtime in this very strange way. Because shooting nature documentaries isn't cheap or easy. Another problem with these are that they often aren't new for frequent documentary viewers and break your immersion.

The documentary is very informative and explains a lot of interesting concepts extremely well. The way it explained the great dying (Permian extinction) was amazing for example. There are some things that could have been improved though. The time period we find ourselves in often isn't made clear, especially in the first few episodes this can be annoying. They also tend to jump from here to there a bit too much, instead of just going chronologically.

It covers a lot of different species and stories per episode, which is great. I do wish that they would have been a bit more original in their choice of creatures instead of going for the more well know ones. There are a few mistakes (conscerning science and realism) but nothing terrible in my opinion.

I've focussed a lot on the "bad". But let me make clear that this series really isn't a bad one, not even in the slightest. It does fall short when compared to the giants that "Walking with Dinosaurs" and "Prehistoric Planet" are, but has a lot of merit in its own way and definitely deserves to exist and be watched.

I'm constantly asking "But how?" Millions of years go by and new species appear but there's no information on how. What species did it originally evolve from. The answers are provided for our current animals which I already know and yes it's evolution of course but I want more details on the process. I want more science but maybe it's just me. It's very vague but I'm on episode one so hopefully they'll provide more entail but I doubt it. A massive squid appeared but no info on its structure and what caused it grow such a long cone head. Then it mentioned another squid that's hidden under sand, referring to its large eyes being able to see prey. Large eyes? That's all?!? Just the size?!? Psshhh.