Earth

A very illuminating survey of the often rocky path of life on Earth through geologic time.

The evolution of life has been heavily dependent on the environment, many times independent of life such as plate tectonics, asteroid collisions, volcanic activity, ice ages. Interestingly, often in concert and through the medium of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide. Also, often via the environmental impact of life itself in a feedback loop. For instance, the abundant oxygen in our atmosphere, so essential to our existence, only came about due to other life forms.

A profound picture emerges that has never been so clearly expressed before.

The final episode focuses on ourselves. Both putting our environmental impact in context with the long chain of other dramatic changes and emphasising the uniqueness of our situation. Lessons to be drawn for sure.

However, for me, the main take away is the wonder of the mind-boggling series of random events, unforeseeable consequences and feedback-loops that have led to creatures such as ourselves. Humbling. Also, perhaps, of relevance regarding life in the wider universe.

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.

Once in a long eon (or so it seems) there is a moment in TV history that puts your faith back into the idea that there is some kind of plebian brain cells left somewhere at the bbc! 'EARTH' the 5 part brilliant, informative, expertly presented (by Chris Packham) tv series has been a long awaited revelation! Out of the Crass, Vile, cheap mush that clogs up all the channels a beautifully constructed series about how our cold ball of rock transforms into the amazing Blue/Green pearl over millennia is so gratifying. Chris Packham is gradually progressing to fill the shoes of the 'Father of the planet' David Attenborough. Deep praise to all concerned.

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.

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).