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Everyone is going wild for David Attenborough’s dinosaur documentary
As Sir David Attenborough’s comforting, dulcet tones begin on Prehistoric Planet, it settles us into a familiar place. “Ah yes,” you think. “Another deep dive into planet Earth; the incredible flower and fauna captured by the most unbelievable cinematography, all patiently explained to us by the nation’s grandfather.”
Which is why, while watching Prehistoric Planet (exec produced by Jon Favreau), there will be many times when you have to remind yourself that what you’re watching is not a real-life documentary, but a state-of-the-art reimagining of the creatures who roamed the earth more than 66 million years ago.
As one viewer on Twitter put it: “I don’t know if this is CGI or animatronic but it looks fuckin real to me.”
The first in the five-part series, titled Coasts. opens with what will surely be one of the TV shots of the year. The genuinely jaw-dropping footage (is it still footage if it’s computer generated?) is of the most famous dinosaur of all – the T Rex – swimming gracefully through the sea with several of its offspring. Who knew the Rex could swim? Consider me now educated, as Attenborough explains that, due to its “hollow air-filled bones and powerful limbs”, it made them such “effective swimmers”.
Once on land, it’s all dog-eat-dog (or dino-eat-dino) again. The Daddy Rex hogs a dead two-tonne turtle for its dinner, while the kids squabble over their menu; ugh, not sea turtle hatchlings again.
The action moves on to Pterosaurs which, sure, we’ve all seen many depictions of before. But have you ever considered how they’d walk with their giant wing bones? Wonder no more, as they hobble along the ground until they take off in flight, every single feather on their body illuminated by the insane level of detail on the render.
As is traditional in any Attenborough doc, the struggle of little baby creatures to avoid predators – they’re obviously not short of those in 66 million B.C. – is portrayed, as we see a flock of just-hatched Alcione dino-birds on a savage cliff top. They now have to work out how to use their wings, not crash into the sea, not be eaten by bigger Pterosaurs – the 9-foot Phosphatodraco definitely being the one to avoid – and make it through to the shaded forest of a nearby island where they can live for the next five years. And that’s before they notice that asteroid headed to earth…
In more stunning shots, we learn about the life cycle of the Tuarangisaurus, who give birth to 10-foot-long newborns, the “biggest babies of all time” (hotly contested by Donald Trump); who need to swallow stones to act as “ballards and gizzard stone to grind up their unchewed food” and who once again have to escape the clutches of giant predators like the terrifying Mosasaurus.
The highly naturalistic shots are down to the world-renowned team at the BBC Studios Natural History Unit (who, alongside Attenborough, are behind the genre-defining Planet Earth, Blue Planet and Seven Worlds, One Planet) and the photorealistic visuals from MPC (who worked on the remakes of The Lion King and The Jungle Book) are what gives the series its astounding, hyper-real quality. There’s the feeling that, short of actually extracting DNA from a fossilised mosquito in amber, this is the most technologically advanced way in our lifetimes we’re going to experience what life was like for these creatures.
Prehistoric Planet is a five-night event, with each episode being streamed over five consecutive days from May 23 on Apple TV+. Don’t have Apple TV+? Well, you can still view it for free, by signing up to their seven-day free trial to the service, giving you two extra days to re-watch all your favourite parts.
Jurassic World Dominion? They could never.
Prehistoric Planet streams on Apple TV+ nightly for five nights from May 23.
