Nicholas Gaffney

Initially I thought this was quite good. No Blue Planet or Planet Earth. But that’s a high bar to follow. What made me go with 2 stars was 2 things….1. As a person, along with many others who relate nature documentaries with Attenborough. It’s the passion, and heartfelt way that he narrates and emotionally describes things that makes it so engaging to watch his stuff. Morgan reading off of a script, legendary voice aside, makes for a less engaging watch…. And 2. the apparent need of the producers to create narratives amongst extinct animals that would never have existed. At one point, during the ice age part, a pack of lions blockade a heard of mammoths. Standing in a face off. Freeman then adds to the drama describing the thoughts of the mammoth. And the lions. “The mammoth is thinking”….”now the lion is thinking…”. Based on nothing at all. A lion would never just face off in front of a mammoth. There’s no evidence in the natural world for any predator doing that. They always chase and attack from behind. It was anthropomorphising the animals simply to create a false narrative and supposed drama. It stopped being a nature show at that point and nothing more than a scripted soap opera