The Living Planet

Background

Making "The Living Planet" was just as tough as its predecessor, with each episode shot in many different countries. The Sudan was a logistical nightmare—the crew had to be flown in without any runways or roads. In the Himalayas, there was no transport at all, so they had to hike. In South America, a cameraman couldn't find a boat, so he pushed his gear in a rubber dinghy while swimming behind it.

Some subjects were even harder: the team waited two years for news of a volcano erupting, pausing all other filming in the hope it would still be active when they got there. Cameraman Hugh Miles got within 25 yards of a polar bear for a close-up. For the episode "The Sky Above," they borrowed NASA's gravity research plane, nicknamed the Vomit Comet. The most time-consuming sequence was red-breasted geese in flight—not the filming itself, but the preparation.

The birds were hand-reared from birth so they would follow their 'mother's' voice, eventually allowing them to be photographed flying beside a moving open-top car. Filming techniques kept improving; one new tool was a scuba suit with a large, clear faceplate that let Attenborough talk and be seen underwater. In an interview, Attenborough downplayed his own role, saying the hard parts were handled by the cameramen, directors, and recordists who had to capture animal behavior no one had ever seen before. He added that it wasn't too difficult for him to walk onto a rock and speak to the camera.

Episodes

The first episode of this series aired on January 19, 1984, and opens in the Kali Gandaki river valley in the Himalayas, the deepest valley on Earth. Here, temperatures shift from tropical conditions at the lower end to polar cold at higher elevations, demonstrating how animals adapt to specific environments. As Attenborough climbs higher, the landscape becomes more barren and mountainous, and the wildlife is increasingly specialized for such harsh conditions.

Yet these adaptations are relatively new: the mountains themselves rose from the ocean floor around 65 million years ago. To illustrate the immense geological forces at work, Attenborough stands before an erupting volcano in Iceland and picks up a piece of basalt. The Giant's Causeway shows what happens to this rock over vast stretches of time. Iceland’s volcanoes mark the northern tip of a mostly underwater fissure that runs along one side of the planet, creating volcanic islands wherever it rises above the sea.

This process, called plate tectonics, originates deep within the Earth and is what split Africa from South America, forming the Atlantic Ocean. Footage from the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens shows the devastation it caused, but Attenborough notes that this was minor compared to the 1883 explosion of Krakatoa, which he describes in detail. When subterranean pressure shifts, it creates hot springs and caverns, environments that can sustain life. On the four-disc BBC DVD box set (BBCDVD1234), this episode is also titled "The Furnaces of the Earth."

Merchandise

The Living Planet is available on DVD in the UK as a four-disc set for Regions 2 and 4, catalog number BBCDVD1234, which came out on 1 September 2003 and is also part of The Life Collection. The only bonus feature is a 40-minute making-of documentary. A mistake on the DVD cover lists the first episode as "The Furnaces of the Earth." A separate four-disc Region 1 set was released by Time-Life Video on 25 November 2003, but it has a heavily reordered episode sequence, and Attenborough’s introductions between episodes were cut down accordingly.

David Attenborough’s companion book, The Living Planet: A Portrait of the Earth, was published by BBC Books on 2 February 1984. Andrew Langley’s The Making of The Living Planet came out from George Allen & Unwin in 1985. Both books went out of print, but a revised edition titled The Living Planet: The Web of Life on Earth was released in 2022. An LP of Elizabeth Parker’s score, The Living Planet: Music from the BBC TV Series, first appeared in 1984 and was reissued by Silva Screen on 12 August 2016.

Miles Kington

The humorist Miles Kington presents the making of The Living Planet, offering a distinctive introduction to David Attenborough. Kington observes that only humans, unlike other living creatures, produce films about other species, and he classifies Attenborough as one of the most renowned and intriguing filmmakers of this kind. Noting that Attenborough is somewhat shy and difficult to capture on film in his own environment, Kington remarks that viewers are fortunate to see him at work on his greatest project yet.

Attenborough’s goal is to locate and film subjects ranging from volcanoes to jellyfish in order to demonstrate how the Earth functions. His usual surroundings are entirely unsuitable for this task; his home in London and his workplace in Bristol lack volcanoes and jellyfish, forcing him to travel vast distances to find his subjects. He possesses the necessary boundless curiosity and tireless energy, but he lacks the substantial funding and expertise that only the BBC can supply.

He maintains a peculiar, symbiotic relationship with the BBC, a strange and seemingly friendly entity whose inner workings remain poorly understood.