Pure nostalgia: David Attenborough's Life on Earth

As a child, watching Life on Earth and The Living Planet on television was where my love of nature and wildlife truly began.

These series opened up a vast, living world far beyond my immediate surroundings—ancient forests, oceans, deserts, and creatures I had never imagined. They made the natural world feel coherent, intelligible, and deeply fascinating, shaped by evolution and interconnected systems rather than random facts.

Just as important was the presence of David Attenborough himself. Calm, precise, and quietly passionate, he didn’t sensationalise nature or talk down to the viewer. He explained, observed, and invited curiosity. His approach modelled respect—for evidence, for life, and for the planet.

Looking back, those early encounters didn’t just spark an interest; they laid foundations. A lifelong appreciation of wildlife, a sense of wonder about the natural world, and a deep admiration for David Attenborough—now one of my greatest role models—all trace back to those evenings spent watching Life on Earth and The Living Planet.

Interesting facts about Life on Earth

• A television first: Life on Earth (1979) was the first major TV series to attempt a complete, global narrative of evolution, from single-celled life to humans.
• Record-breaking audience: The final episode drew over 500 million viewers worldwide, an unprecedented figure for a factual documentary series at the time.
• Thirteen years in the making: The concept gestated for more than a decade, drawing on Attenborough’s earlier travel-based natural history programmes and his growing conviction that evolution was the unifying story of life.
• Filmed in over 100 countries: The production spanned six continents and thousands of locations, making it one of the most logistically ambitious TV projects ever attempted.
• The Galápagos moment: The famous sequence with marine iguanas in the Galápagos was not planned as iconic—but it became one of television’s most recognisable images and a visual shorthand for evolution in action.
• Attenborough on screen as guide, not host: Unlike many presenters before him, Attenborough positioned himself within landscapes, speaking conversationally, as if inviting the viewer to stand beside him rather than lecturing from above.
• No environmental activism—yet: Life on Earth is notably non-polemical. It focuses on wonder, complexity, and explanation rather than warning. Attenborough’s explicit environmental advocacy would come much later in his career.
• A turning point for the BBC: The series helped establish the BBC Natural History Unit as the global gold standard for wildlife filmmaking.
• Changed how evolution was taught: After broadcast, the series was widely used in schools and universities, profoundly shaping public understanding of Darwinian evolution.
• The book was a bestseller: The companion volume Life on Earth became one of the best-selling science books of all time, translated into dozens of languages.
• Set the template for everything that followed: Every later Attenborough landmark—The Living Planet, The Trials of Life, Planet Earth, Blue Planet—can be traced back to the narrative ambition and tone established here.
• Attenborough’s own view: He has repeatedly said that Life on Earth was the most important project of his career, because it gave him “the chance to tell the whole story.”

Interesting facts about The Living Planet

• Follow-up to a landmark: The Living Planet was the direct successor to Life on Earth, shifting focus from evolution over time to life across Earth’s environments.
• A different organising idea: Instead of taxonomy, the series is structured around ecological zones—deserts, oceans, rainforests, mountains, grasslands, and polar regions.
• Eight years in production: Planning and filming took most of the early 1980s, reflecting the scale and ambition of the project.
• Global in scope: Filmed in over 60 countries, capturing some of the most extreme and remote habitats on the planet.
• Pioneering wildlife footage: The series included some of the earliest close-up filming of deep-sea life, rainforest canopies, and desert survival strategies.
• Less presenter, more observer: David Attenborough appears less frequently on screen than in Life on Earth, allowing landscapes and animal behaviour to take centre stage.
• Early ecological warning signs: While still measured in tone, the series contains subtle references to human impact, hinting at concerns that would later become central to Attenborough’s work.
• Influential companion book: The Living Planet book became a major international bestseller, reinforcing the series’ educational reach.
• Technical ambition: Filming required new approaches to underwater cinematography, aerial shots, and long-lens behavioural filming, pushing BBC Natural History Unit capabilities forward.
• A philosophical shift: The series presents Earth as a dynamic, self-regulating system, foreshadowing later ecological and systems-thinking perspectives.
• Part of a trilogy: It sits between Life on Earth and The Trials of Life, forming a foundational trilogy in Attenborough’s career.