The biggest beasts with the biggest budget and the biggest names in wildlife documentaries
Apple’s push to challenge the big beasts of streaming its continuing at pace. As well as expanding its range of movies, with Argylle and Spirited, two genuine blockbusters due later in the year, and continuing to pump out high-quality drama like The Essex Serpent, Slow Horses and Severance, Apple is also pushing Apple TV Plus into new areas. In the US, it will soon have live baseball on Friday nights, and now has its sights set on winning over families with some real big beasts. The biggest beasts to ever walk the earth in fact. Prehistoric Planet, a five-episode run of documentaries, starts on Monday (May 23) and will go out every night for a week, with the final instalment hitting services on Friday (May 27). It’s a hugely ambitious offering that seeks to hit the same standards as the BBC’s beloved range of nature documentaries, Dynasties and Planet Earth – complete with a voiceover from Sir David Attenborough and a score from Hans Zimmer. The series follows the structure laid down by the BBC with Planet Earth in that viewers will be taken to a different habitat in each episode, beginning with Coasts. The show will then cycle through Deserts, Freshwater, Ice Worlds and Forests, all depicted in stunning detail, 66 million years ago. There are some breathtaking moments, including a fight between two vast mosasaurs, the giant sea-dwelling dinosaurs, as they battle to be the alpha in their pack, and a strangely touching sequence where we see two T-Rex begin a mating courtship by rubbing their faces. It turns out that the way to the heart of one of the biggest, baddest beasts the earth has ever seen is through rubbing its cheek, who knew? That’s just a fraction of the world explored on the series, which doesn’t only take in dinosaurs, but a whole range of animals who lived at that time. Though, as you’d expect, the dinosaurs are the main attraction. The ambition for executive producer Mike Gunton – the first Creative Director of the BBC Natural History Unit and a man whose association with Attenborough goes back to 1987 – has been long-held. He tells TechRadar: “Almost exactly 10 years ago I was stood on a mountainside with David doing the introduction to Africa, and in the opening lines David says “Nowhere on planet Earth does wildlife put on a greater show.” As he was doing that, I was thinking: has that always been true? Was there ever a time when wildlife maybe did put on a greater show? And I thought: there is! It was the time of the dinosaurs. So could you take everybody on that mountainside – all the crew, all that kit, all that expertise, and Sir David Attenborough – put them in a time machine, fly them back 66 million years ago and effectively make a wildlife series in that time. And so that was the idea. Planet Earth, 66 million years ago.”
And that’s what they’ve done. Prehistoric Planet is a vast, jaw-dropping spectacle that covers all aspects of life on Earth 66 million years ago. No expense has been spared, with the whole of the BBC Natural History Unit involved as well as a team of advisors and consultants who are the world experts on dinosaurs. To pull this off, Gunton and Tim Walker, showrunner on Prehistoric Planet, needed serious resources, which is where Apple and its deep, deep pockets comes in.
