Life [DVD]

After Planet Earth became a legendary hit on home cinema for certain sequences on full HD, there were high expectations placed on any HD follow up releases. Life doesn't disappoint in this respect. 4 Years in the making, this Latest series is a bewildering showcase of the reclusive types of life we find on the planet and technology used to capture it.

As opposed to being a purely educational lesson on the variety of species and their relations with each other and their environment, it is the weird and wonderful species that get the film time. This is a good thing due to the rarity of some of the obtained footage. The skill that has been required by the team to capture these moments is immense, probably not replicable by all other wildlife documentary makers due to time and budget constraints.

Episodes are 50 minutes long followed by a ten minute insight into their efforts at the end illustrating the techniques used to film a single scene in an episode. Each episode covers a separate animal group, with some episodes covering broader issues such as hunters and prey and general challenges faced by some life. These broader episodes do often have repeated footage, eg some penguin sequences are shared between the `challenges of life' episode and the `birds' episode. As I watched these all in quick succession, I found some parts repetitive, but watching some of the more stunning sequences for a second time was still welcomed.

Particular highlights were seeing the primates at work and using tools, which deeply illustrated our genetic proximity to them. (It made me wonder at times if I could actually find an example of a primate making more intelligent use of its environment and each other than a human). I generally appreciated the sequences that depict a species clever use of environment or body parts that hints towards higher intelligence than we would normally attribute to the other members of the animal kingdom, and there were plenty of these occasions to behold. The marine episode also captured some striking sequences and the butterflies collecting in huge numbers on the insects episode was stunning.

The HD picture quality is more evident in some places than others, though generally id say its excellent overall and still definitely more consistent than Planet Earth was. As the filming takes place in the real world with real lighting and positioning constraints, not all images are going to be as fantastic as the next. The underwater sequences showed a mix, where some of the coral and organisms looked wonderfully sharp and illuminated, but other shots could look murky due to the impurities in the water. I would say every episode captures at some point a jaw-dropping sequence that gives you the full justification for why you bought your Bluray player. In many cases it really had to be appreciated how some things so small such as ants could be captured in sufficient detail to fit a full 1080p image with no focus issues.

This series seemed designed to bring images to shock people, as they would come to realise that such weird organisms exist in reality and not just in CGI movie sequences. Of the seemingly almost infinite variety of species on the planet, only a tiny fraction is represented here, that leaves me wanting another series to continue the showcase. No doubt Attenborough and team will oblige.

I am watching the series each week & bought the dvd the day it was released. There are so many wonderful scenes it's all but impossible to pick out just one. But if I had to choose a favourite, it would have to be those young meerkats falling asleep standing up.

'Life' is filled with such gems, those clever dolphins, that selfless octopus, the stalk-eyed flies, the elephant family, that incredibly cute little shrew, that young ibex outwitting a predator it's never seen before, the cheetahs working together to bring down an ostritch, etc, etc, etc,.

This is definately one for the dvd shelf!

I sometimes despair of the BBC under current management with there huge salaries and 70p car parking claims! That said I can forgive Mark Thompson almost anything when it comes to squeezing every last drop of wisdom and learning from one of the greatest Britons of this century Sir David Attenborough. The words "national treasure" is overused but what we are witnessing is the development of the most remarkable "database" of natural history which will last through the ages but which also comes with a serious warning about our impact on the climate. Sir David and his partners the brilliant BBC natural history unit based at Bristol have generated one of the great bodies of research work of the past hundred years and a miraculous advert for intelligent television and quality programming.

You also sometime recoil when you consider what a wasted medium television has become. Bruce Springsteen once sung of "57 channels and nothing on" and surf that remote on any day and you sometimes long for the days of 4 firecely competitive channels who had to major on quality and not the lowest denominator. Quite how we have managed to debase the genre in this way is worrying and astounding. Yet before we lose faith there is always oasis of quality and in the case of Attenborough's programmes the standard never dips.

In this current programme "Life" there is so many highlights it is difficult to single them out. But one thinks of the filming of the tense and pitiful portrayal of the first footage of komodo dragons hunting a water buffalo and stalking the animal for weeks as the poison they have injected through bites disable the creature. The tricks of Dolphins to catch mullets by stirring up ocean mud and the killer whales coming to shore to catch seals are equally memorable. Although the stars series are the three Kenyan cheetahs.

Another review on this page suggests that "Life" has a quality of De ja vu and has been done better in the series "Blue Planet" or "Planet Earth". A churlish argument in my view since much of Attenborough's work is complimentary and while I accept that the two aforementioned series are magisterial, "Life" stands in its own right as a thrilling addition to his oeuvre. This is the only programme that my children will actively leave various X Boxes and Play stations to sit down and watch. They will also not complain if it clashes with some celebrity nonsense or trivia on another channel. Attenborough's programmes challenge, stimulate, provoke and most importantly make you think. They are also populist, intelligent, hugely watchable and thus viewed by millions across the the world. He has done broadcasting a massive service and we all owe him the most profound debt.