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IMDbPro

Earth Story

  • TV Series
  • 1998–
  • 6h 40m
IMDb RATING
8.6/10
235
YOUR RATING
Earth Story (1998)
Documentary

A BBC documentary series on geology presented by Aubrey Manning.A BBC documentary series on geology presented by Aubrey Manning.A BBC documentary series on geology presented by Aubrey Manning.

  • Stars
    • Aubrey Manning
    • George Plafker
    • Vincent Courtillot
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • IMDb RATING
    8.6/10
    235
    YOUR RATING
    • Stars
      • Aubrey Manning
      • George Plafker
      • Vincent Courtillot
    • 8User reviews
    • 1Critic review
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • Episodes8

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    Top cast4

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    Aubrey Manning
    • Presenter
    George Plafker
    • Self
    Vincent Courtillot
    • Self
    John Dewey
    • Self
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

    User reviews8

    8.6235
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    Featured reviews

    10johnmcc150

    The way that science should be done on TV

    Earth Story is a masterpiece in the way it clearly describes our present understanding of the geological processes. If anyone had said I would sit through eight programmes about geology, watch them again and then a third time, I would not have believed them. It gives the information clearly and straight, without patronising. This is in contrast with the BBC's current hyper-active style which uses a succession of irrelevant images when dealing with scientific subjects and which has to tell everything three times. In Earth Story the camera-work illustrates the points, the people who made the discoveries explain their contributions well, and it is held together by Aubrey Manning's intelligent narrative. Would the BBC please go back to making science programmes like this? I can only suppose that the voters who gave it less than 10/10 were forced to watch it at school.
    10jd-116

    Just brilliant

    I don't know how to start describing this series. I only came upon it recently via the Geography channel. Frankly it's hard to imagine a series like this being made today, because it demolishes the Global Warming hoax and therefore it would not be given a BBC budget. How lucky it is that this series was commissioned and budgeted before the climate change movement got their grip on the media and that nobody at National Geographic noticed just how subversive it is.

    Professor Manning demonstrates that throughout its existence of approx 4.5 billion years the Earth has been by turn both very very hot and also very very cold. Its magnetic field has switched from North to South and back again many, many times. Sea levels have risen and sunk an infinity of times. Ice ages have come and gone times without number. And all this without any help from mankind. (Unless, that is, those sturdy cave dwellers in the early Holocene were building gas-guzzling SUVs.) How did Nature manage it?

    Needless to say, this series was commissioned and produced long before the current hysteria about climate change had got going. Catch it while you can. It will probably be illegal to watch it at some point in the near future.
    blueboot

    Earth Story - If only all new (science) programmes were like this

    A bold statement must follow about the quality of 'Earth Story' and is given at the end of this review.

    As the handful of other reviewers have rightly alluded this is an eight-part series dealing with the entire geological history of our planet over the 4,600,000,000 years or so of its existence, combined with how natural life processes occurring over three thousand million years of bacteria (initially they were stromatolite colonies) interacting with atmospheric and geological processes such as the formation and spreading movement of the continents (known as plate tectonics), together with how numerous meteorological, natural chemical and physical processes have come to ultimately shape the world in which we recognise and live in now. This fantastic televised feat is accomplished with great clarity and alacrity by narrator Aubrey Manning, himself a biologist, in only 8 hours! At no time is the viewer patronised.

    Over a decade on all the science explained in the series remains current, and is all but unanimously regarded as wholly accurate by the international scientific community.

    To unravel a vast web of once unconnected strands of Earth's natural processes that took humans thousands of years to piece together, and do so coherently is a true masterpiece of programme making. We join Manning's quest as he himself attempts to unravel Earth's history across the eons. It's a huge journey, across the vastness of geological time, so different from the perspective of a human lifespan, and is brought home with ease. Visual aids, such as: viewing our planet's oceanic sea-floor spreading by satellites from space orbit, or, the demonstration of the compression and (future) collapse of the Himalayas by means of a simple tilted board and a viscous sticky fluid falling upon it, reveal a tremendous imagination in conveying the scientific principles involved to the viewer.

    The likelihood is no other programme or series made for the small screen has ever been able to explain so much, or deal with such infinite complexity, so competently and concisely. BBC, Discovery and National Geographic take note. Earth Story sets the gold standard which has yet to be equalled by you. The best material TV can offer. Earth Story did not require overbearing unnecessary intrusive music (often no more than psychotically repeated single piano notes), nor endless micro-second gimmicky flashing images viewed from irrelevant camera angles, nor an over simplistic dialogue that leaves your viewers puzzled and frustrated. Comparatively, these are the substandard methods of docu-TV making of the early 21st century.

    Therefore, taking every genre of TV programmes (produced in English) since the dawn of television, whether fiction or fact, EARTH STORY emphatically stands today as the BEST television programme and series ever made.
    9m-solomon

    An answer to all those who criticise the license fee

    I originally watched Earth Story when it was shown for the first time on BBC2, and I'm currently watching it again on UKTV History ten years later.

    It is truly a brilliant series, explaining every facet of the Earth's many geological processes: such as plate tectonics, subduction, spreading, the carbon dioxide cycle and iron deposition as well as how those processes interact with the planet's meteorology and biology in a complex dance. It also reveals how the Earth is also reliant on and affected by the other elements of The Solar System.

    Personally, I don't see how you can get to the conclusion of the previous reviewer. Manning doesn't get involved in climate change, largely because the programme pre-dates the current debate and because the series sets out to be instructive about the natural life-cycle of the planet as opposed the effect of humans on that planet.

    Manning is more interested in a planet that's existed for several billion years and is - as far as we can tell at the moment - unique, certainly in this solar system. The fact that humans who currently infest the planet may well cause the whole thing to go pear-shaped is outside the scope of the programme which is great because it avoids turning the programme into a polemic.

    All in all, it's an instructive, well-told story that is - as previously mentioned - an example of how the BBC can make great programmes when it abides by the "mission to educate" that was the blueprint of Sir John Reith when the corporation was established.
    10warhammer-88189

    Fantastic series

    John Downes you're right that the series is just brilliant, though wrong about this program debunking climate change, as it didn't do this or attempt to. Search and watch 'Prof. Aubrey Manning - Part 1 - Learning to Live with our Planet' and he shows the facts about climate change.

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    Details

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    • Release date
      • 1998 (United Kingdom)
    • Country of origin
      • United Kingdom
    • Language
      • English
    • Also known as
      • Povestea pământului
    • Filming locations
      • Alaska, USA
    • Production company
      • British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Tech specs

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    • Runtime
      • 6h 40m(400 min)
    • Color
      • Color
    • Sound mix
      • Stereo
    • Aspect ratio
      • 16 : 9

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