Earth

I enjoyed the series - this is such a fascinating subject for sure. As others have said though, condensing so much into a few episodes means at times it's just scratching the surface.

My main irritation though was the tone - it's pitched mainly at a school age audience is my guess. Every event has to have dramatic music behind it to make sure you understand whether it's a Sad Thing or a Wonderful Thing, the script at times is very silly - 'the world had become so hostile that to plant life is must have seemed a hopeless struggle, but just as they were on the point of giving up the struggle, they realised they had a friend, and a friend who wanted to help. And that friend was called...'. Cut to Packham staring resolutely into the camera. 'Fungus.'

It also gives the impression at times that evolution always had the aim to create humans, and that to do so it needed a lot of help from random disasters, a bit of a Lord Of The Rings quest. In fact humans are just the random place to which all the random disasters led.

But enjoyable in small doses (the music really gets to you after about 30 minutes).

Beautiful, awe-inspiring and emotional. It tells an amazing story and, in more places than is usual for this kind of show, actually explains the evidence for the statements.

Chris Packham surprised me at being able to hold a bombastic show like this together. His shows are usually much smaller and more informal. He even sounds like Attenborough on occasions!

But the glaring problem? The script keeps using the language of creationism around evolution. It implies evolution had purpose, that organisms chose to evolve, that the Earth created conditions specifically to allow humans to exist. None of this is true. Evolution has no direction or purpose. It is just "whoever had the most grandchildren, their traits will spread through natural selection". I get that it makes for flowery prose, but it is misleading at a time where we need to be literate about this stuff.

The message it gives? Don't worry about climate change. The Earth chose to save us before and will eventually do it again (with volcanoes probably) so don't sweat it. We might even choose to evolve to cope with it. We need to understand the opposite.

A series that tries to condense approximately 4.6 billion years of history into five hours, is inevitably going to be highly selective about what to include. The astromological impacts, the changing geology, and the consequential impacts on the atmosphere, were fascinating. The origins of plant and animal life and their subsequent developments were also interesting. The part I found wanting, was an exlanation for the origins and devlopment of fungi. Whilst plant life was demonstrated to have evolved from the sea, when it hit land it developed a symbiosis with fungi, according to the program, resulting in the origin of lichen. But there was no expalnation of where the fungi originated. Furthermore, some early species of fungi were apparently enormous, towering over everything else that grew at the time. Yet, how these enormous structures came to exist, when according to the program the world was still made of bare rock with little or no organic material, was not explained.

The series could have been longer and more detailed, but it is in my view, one of the most important natural history series in a long time. It clearly demonstrates how major and sometimes minor changes to the environment can produce dynamic and sometimes unexpected and profound changes to the ability of life to maintain itself.

In these present times of uncertain climatic forces, this is a very timely series.

Chris Packham does a fantastic job of explaining our planet's deep history and how fleeting we are but also how resilient life is.

Thoroughly engaging and immersive.

Great visuals and story telling. The places he visits really help put the different pieces of the geological jigsaw together.

The science behind the story telling is highly credible and Chris uses easy to understand language that makes this series accessible to all.

I have been an avid science documentary watcher, and the BBC have added another masterpiece to their already extensive list of other documentaries such as Planet Earth. This is up there!

Brilliant.

I often lamented how the demise of BBC's Horizon represented an inability and lack of confidence in the BBC to aim high when considering how to present a documentary. Well, perhaps there is a resurgence on the way. I binged all 6 episodes.

This series is presented in a logical mature style where the story of the earth unfolds 6 episode, with each episode covering the essential elements that supported the creation of Life. From the atmosphere , to the evolution of plants and humans. There are gaps in the narrative and a few leaps of faith, but the story is well presented by Chris Packham in a personal but still scientific manner.

Now what is absolutely surprising, and a credit to the BBC, is that it was co-produced by US based NOVA and GBH-Boston and does not suffer from being dumbed down but most importantly there are no talking heads interfering with the narrative. The producers have sensibly pushed them to the end of each episode, so that if you want to listen to them if you want to get some further background you can or not. Thank goodness they were not part of the main episode, their style of of presentation would have detracted from the integrity of the Packham's delivery.