Human

Dreadful. Truly dreadful. The narrative is not consistent. That is the biggest gripe. Inaccurate presentation of information is unforgivable.

At one point I thought this was a parody and had to check. Is not, apparently.

You could make three very nicely paced 20 mins pieces, that could include far more information and data, and be far more enjoyable to watch.

The host has potential, but the producer and director have done her no favours whatsoever.

It is such a shame but this is an opportunity lost.

How people have rated this 10/10?!? I can only imagine that they have been paid for or are friends and family of those involved.

A real shame :(

Most series about human civilisation skip lightly over pre-history in a single epidsode. There is something welcome, therefore, about a programme that concentrates on the story of the earliest humans. Unfortunately, 'Human' just isn't very good. The visuals are spectacular, but that's because it shows us sand dunes and glaciers when talking about how humans once lived in hostile environments, rather than the less extreme places they actually lived. Much of the commentary has a vauge "feel the wonder" vibe as opposed to the more educational content of someone like Jacob Boronwoski. Most annoyingly, presenter Ella ah-Shamahi talks endless about our relatioship with "other species of human", without once defining what she means by the terms "human" and "species". She is thus particuarly unelightening when discussing interbreeding. Ultimately, what we get here is a lot of pretty pictures; but not much to truly enlighten us.

For those like myself that found this a bit slow, it's worth sticking with. If you're not into the sweeping slo-mo landscapes and dramatic music, and just want to get to the bones (excuse the pun) of the matter, I would suggest the following:

• fast forward until the presenter is holding something to show you, or is speaking to someone.

• fast forward until a map or artifact is on screen.

This moves the viewing from wondering and questioning and repeating narrative to the actual information you're watching this for. Yes, you might lose a bit in the storytelling and the overall information, but there's enough there, and there's generally a quick summary of what a discovery means after it's shown. So I'm only really missing the questions and wondering, as the answers are summarised after the showing!

Hope this helps. I find this fascinating, but like others, I really struggled to watch with the slow pacing of this. The landscapes and cinematography are stunning though.

On several occasions I thought we were going to have to wait for the presenter to have a cry before we could move on. It is just too dramatic for me. Is a shame because it is so interesting. Was slightly put off at the beginning by the writer's basic mistake; I'm sure a lot of primary school pupils can tell you that 300 000 years isn't a third longer than 200 000.

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.