LOS ANGELES: ‘Life on Our Planet,’ the new natural history series from Netflix and Steven Spielberg, sets out to tell the entire, dramatic story of life on Earth in a serialized, “binge watch” format.
Streaming globally from Wednesday, the show’s eight episodes transport viewers through Earth’s five previous mass extinction events, each recreated with computer-generated visual effects.
As Morgan Freeman’s narration reminds us, life has always found a way to endure every catastrophic event thrown at it over four billion years, from brutal ice ages to meteorites.
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Each time, species that survive the destruction do battle for the next era’s dominance in a ‘Game of Thrones’-style fight – only between vertebrates and invertebrates, or reptiles and mammals, instead of Starks and Lannisters.
“What we wanted to do, our intention at the very beginning, was to serialize the story of life. Make it a kind of binge watch. Because the story is so dramatic,” said showrunner Dan Tapster.
“I think, and I hope, that is something that we’ve achieved, which is possibly a world-first in the natural history space.”
Aside from a series of cliffhanger finales, ‘Life on Our Planet’ finds dramatic tension with a series of ordinary, loveable underdogs who “win” evolution against the odds – at least for a few hundred million years.
The influence of executive producer Spielberg’s company, Amblin Television, encouraged a series with “a lot more emotion” and “pathos” than other natural history programs, said Tapster.
The show picks out key species, such as the first fish with a backbone, or the first vertebrate to migrate from ocean to land.
With 99 percent of all the species that ever lived now extinct, filmmakers had no shortage to choose between.
“There’s about at least a billion species that are no longer with us, and we had to narrow that down to 65,” said Tapster.
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But those selected are often unlikely heroes – plucky survivors, such as the odd-looking Arandaspis fish, which take their chance to shine as larger ocean beasts falter, and reshape the future of life.
Arandaspis “is a bit rubbish, it’s weird… But it’s in (the show), because it has a really crucial role” in evolution, said visual effects supervisor Jonathan Privett.
“One of the things I really love about that scene also is that Arandaspis has just got a hint of ‘ET’ about him,” added Tapster.
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