This is the nature doc that puts others to shame. David Attenborough takes you from caves to deserts to jungles to frozen oceans.
Trailer for “Planet Earth”
You Can’t Make This Sh!t Up
- A pride of 30 lions hunts and kills a massive adult bush elephant at an African waterhole at night. The BBC used infrared cameras to capture it.
- In Outer Mongolia, cameramen film a huge herd of Mongolian gazelles running from a bushfire across the open plains.
- The BBC films 1.5 billion red-billed queleas darkening the sky over Africa. It is one of the largest bird flocks ever filmed.
Watch “Planet Earth”
You can watch “Planet Earth” on HBO Max, Roku, Hulu, Discovery, Apple TV, and Prime Video.
Ratings:
- My Rating: 95/100
- IMDB Rating: 9.4/10
- Rotten Tomatoes Ratings: 92/100 (Users); 100/100 (Critics)
Director’s Note: “Planet Earth” was made by the BBC Natural History Unit and is narrated by David Attenborough. Sigourney Weaver narrated the U.S. Discovery Channel version.
Release Date: March 5, 2006
Other Unique Stuff
- The “Caves” episode feels like science fiction. The crew filmed inside giant cave systems with creatures and rock formations that look completely alien.
- The series took years to film because the BBC crews waited for behavior almost nobody had ever captured before. Some shots required sitting in brutal weather or remote locations for weeks just to get a few minutes of footage.
- The great white shark breach sequence changed nature TV forever. Watching a multi-ton shark launch fully out of the ocean still feels unreal 20 years later.
Wrap Up:
“Planet Earth” is still one of the best nature docs ever made. Watch it on the biggest screen you have.
Thanks for reading!
Heather Fenty, Guest Writer, Daily Doc