(courtesy IMP Awards)
There’s an interesting trend in some parts of modern documentary making that views the enthralling wonder of information in and of itself as not enough to keep peoples’ attention.
To be fair, we do live in a hyper-attentive age where people are pulled in a thousand different directions at once, and there is a case to be made for presenting all kinds of topics in as fascinating a way as possible so the widest number of people will pay attention; after all, we want people to watch and learn and simply plonking the info down and hooping they pay attention doesn’t really cut it anymore.
But what seems to happen more often than not these days is that documentaries go for full hyper breathlessness, presenting what are often incredibly interesting stories or histories in a way that might make even a tabloid media personality blanch a little.
Now, while Life on our Planet doesn’t suffer wholly from the sins of some modern documentarians such as overloud, strident narration and quick cuts from one scene to another that reduce facts to mere fleeting though bubbles in a frenzy of the things, it doesn’t really give the sheer weight and wonder of the topic it is covering it’s full due.
To be fair, from a cinematic point of view, it is thing of beauty and wonder and endless fascination.
Through eight well mapped-out episodes, which run the gamut from Earth’s fiery creation some 4.5 billion years ago through to the current Anthropocene age where humanity, by sheer weight of numbers and invasive shaping of the planet is ushering in a sixth mass extinction of life, we’re taken on a high-level journey through the history of a planet which has had more iterations that a long-running TV show.
In and of itself, it is a really engaging look at the world through a series of different ages where life, which to coin a Jurassic Park phrase, which Life on our Planet frequently does, always finds a way, often in forms which look like something off an alien planet or which look nothing like the modern forms it has taken.
Using a documentary style that treats these recreated scenes of life as if they are happening today, much like Prehistoric Planet has done (but, yes, they did it better), you are plunged into ancient oceans full of plesiosaurs or Precambrian predatorial arthropod Anomalocaris on the hunt for trilobites, with the series going to great lengths to tie ancient life back to its modern counterparts.
The intent is to demonstrate, and in that respect, Life on our Planet is reasonably successful, that while these ancient forms of life do look wildly otherworldly, they are part of a long chain of evolutionary life on our planet that has a long and continuing chain of existence despite five mass extinctions that almost saw the world’s magical planets and animals come to rather final ends.
As a teaching tool, or simply an awareness raising exercise to get people to understand how amazing life, and by extension how much is at stake if we fumble the current challenges of climate change, Life on our Planet largely works because it establishes that we what have now is part of a great linking of life and that we must appreciate the past to embrace the present and working to its preservation well into the future.
The final episode rather pointedly underscores what will happen with we don’t but its ham-fisted approach to this salient and timely messaging brings to the fore a major problem with Life on our Planet which seems inclined more than not to sensationalise knowledge that really does need any kind of tabloid shouty over-sharing.
Narrated by Morgan Freeman, whose voice is a dulcet delight though the script he has to deliver is not, Life on our Planet keeps taking information that is fascinating in and of itself and which the series, as noted, succeeds in delivering quite coherently, and amping up the tension and the narrative edge to the point where you feel like you’re sitting in some sort of B-grade pulpy crime novel sprung over-dramatically to life.
It’s not a fatal approach and it’s certainly not enough to stop you watching a show that immersively drops you into life in various ages with completist zeal, but it does distract from a story that really does need the kind of embellishing that Life on our Planet applies.
As Prehistoric Planet rather beautifully demonstrates, you don’t need to scream from the over-hyped rooftops to make this sort of story engaging.
Life on our Planet and Prehistoric Planet both take the same cinematic approach, giving ancient life a modern documentary sheen as if a camera just popped up in the Jurassic and started filming, but whereas the latter lets the scenes quietly unfold with Sir David Attenborough’s measured but enthusiastic narration quietly evoking how wondrous it all is, the former seems hellbent of making us aware of JUST HOW AMAZING IT IS.
It’s still fascinating to watch because how can a story of life this magnificent and incredible not be, and you will stick around for the eight episodes for the visuals alone, but there’s always a sense that Life on our Planet can’t quite trust the visuals and the story alone to grab your attention and keep it.
While Freeman’s narration is delightful, he is forced to hype when hyping is simply not needed, and while it does’t detract from watching a Cave Lion stalking its prey, or pterosaurs scooping up turtle hatchlings by the seashore, it really isn’t needed as Prehistoric Planet masterfully proves and you can only hope if there is a Life on our Planet 2 – though quite where they’d go since they’ve gone from A-to-Z lifewise on planet Earth is going to take some imaginative storytelling – that they tone it down, let the majesty of life do its thing and trust that story to be as gripping as we already know it is.