Prehistoric Planet, producer Mike Gunton and presenter David Attenborough’s audacious five-night nature series that strives to do for Cretaceous Period dinosaurs what Planet Earth did for our present-day world of natural history, opens with Attenborough strolling beneath the life-sized replica of Tyrannosaurus rex at London’s Natural History Museum. “Surely,” Attenborough says, in that gentle, sonorous and yet gripping voice he has, “one of the most remarkable animals to have ever existed, certainly one of the most famous, is a dinosaur,” — pausing for dramatic effect — “Tyrannosaurus rex.” The King. Monster of God.
“An animal to spark the imagination for all of us,” Attenborough adds, and just try to keep your imagination in check for the next hour.
To the extent that Prehistoric Planet is breathtaking — and that it is, from the first-hour Coasts which opens the series Monday on Apple TV+, with other hour-long episodes following each night through May 27, all on Apple TV+ — the entire epic is about sparking the imagination. Palaeontologists, biologists, anthropologists and the CGI effects team that gave the world Disney’s Jungle Book and The Lion King have recreated the world as it was 66 million years ago, and the truly remarkable thing is that they have succeeded in making the entire project seem believable, real, actually there, happening right before our eyes.
The idea sounds absurd — cringeworthy, even. There was always the chance — a tyrannosaurus rex sized chance — that the finished result would resemble one of those lame sci-fi movies from the 1960s, complete with laughable stop-motion effects, bombastic music blaring away and gaudy, clearly faked backdrops as loin-clothed Hollywood matinee idols fended off an army of human skeletons with no more than a pirate’s sword, all the while being menaced from above by a cloud of angry pterodactyls.
Well, you won’t laugh once during Prehistoric Planet, not at anything on the screen, anyway.
“What kind of an animal was it?” Attenborough asks us, and that’s when we know he’s about to show us something marvelous — graceful, dignified, frightening and utterly rivetting. “What did it look like? How did it live?”
And Prehistoric Planet is about to show us exactly that.
“The latest imaging technology enables us to bring it all to life,” Attenborough adds, but he needn’t have bothered. Hans Zimmer’s title music swells, a rising crescendo of digital percussion, and the die is cast. Just two minutes into what just might be one of the most epic natural-history programs ever committed to the small screen, we’re almost literally transported back in time. The resulting effect is wondrous.
Series producer Tim Walker deserves a lot of the credit here, together with Gunton, whose past work for BBC’s Natural History Unit — all with Attenborough — includes Planet Earth II, Dynasties, Africa and the soon-to-debut Green Planet. Every animal in Prehistoric Planet is afforded its own backstory, based on what modern-day scientists have learned from the age of the dinosaurs. In the opening sequence, a mother tyrannosaurus and her four newborns swim for the safety of dry land, pursued by an ocean predator even bigger than she is. Tyrannosaurs lose at least two-thirds of their original brood of 15 within the first year, Attenborough tells us, and who’s to doubt him?
In scene after scene, dinosaur after dinosaur, from crocodilian predators to benign, tiny bird-like creatures, each and every dinosaur character gets its moment in the sun — playing, mating, hunting, searching, getting together and interacting, the cycle of life, as it was 66 million years ago. The cumulative effect is oddly human … and humane. Watching a tyrannosaurus toddler make a mess of a would-be meal by chasing a clever baby turtle that outwits it at every turn is a reminder of those real-life moments that make programs like Planet Earth and Blue Planet such a joy to watch.
Prehistoric Planet is Apple TV+’s first foray into the kind of high-end, large-scale natural-history programs that have become a calling card for BBC and National Geographic, all the more so since Geographic’s recent merger with Disney. Netflix tackled the effects of climate change and the increasingly urgent conservation movement with its own docuseries Our Planet, also presented and narrated by Attenborough.
Prehistoric Planet is in that class. The creative imagination never seemed so inspired, and yet it looks, feels and appears grounded in reality. After all the dazzling effects and the life-and-death moments, that might just be Prehistoric Planet’s crowning achievement. In a word, it works.
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Prehistoric Planet premieres globally on Monday, May 23, on Apple TV+. A new episode streams each day until May 27, after which the entire series will be available on-demand.
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