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.

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.

Chris Packham is a genius, I think he is the natural successor to David Attenborough, this programme is full of facts, some easy to understand others not so easy, so people may now better understand the 'stop oil' activists (they are fighting for us) when he explains how unique and fragile our Earth actually is.

No one should be in doubt how passionate and determined Chris Packham and the other activists are and will not let Earth or us die without a fight.

From beginning to end crammed full of non-stop interesting facts presented in a straightforward honest matter of fact way, thank you Sir Chris.

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.