Eyewitness

Eyewitness claims to be natural history. It is not. In their documentary on how the films were made, they make it explicit, "our aim is to remove the animals from their environment and put them on a white background". This is what they indeed do, the very opposite of modern thinking that animals are inextricably part of their environment. They treat it as if they were doing a cutesy Telus Phone commercial. This series should have been titled, "How to shoot commercials with animals". It has nothing at all to do with natural history.

These films are aimed at children. Yet they show small reptiles breathing fire, most realistically. To adults it is a joke. To children it is faulty education. They teach evolution by showing a single individual morphing from reptile to snake in 3 seconds. This is misleading. Individual animals do not change and certainly not with blinding speed. They love to play with computer generated graphics to turn the natural world into to sterilised playthings.

Watching this series in high school biology truly engaged me, I was immediately taken by the beautiful and exciting main theme that gives me the feeling of embarking upon a grand adventure. Each episode focusing on a specific type of animal displays their average lifetime as well as their biological makeups and historical information. Edward Sachs was a fantastic narrator with not monotone and droll at all as is common with many natural history documentaries, keeping his tone cheerful. Some minimal special effects, while not meant to be realistic added to the entertainment value of the show greatly as the show makes it clear that they wish to humor you, in which I would say they succeeded. I would highly recommend this series to any interested in natural history.

I revisited this on YouTube awhile ago and I was bathed in a pleasant nostalgia for my middle school science class days when we'd watch some of these on VHS. I hope it becomes widely available again because it's a great tool to introduce youngsters to the animal and natural world and it's mysteries. (And I didn't realize until recently that Andrew Sachs is the narrator on the UK version! Manuel himself! I guess it's good that they swap him out for Martin Sheen in the US version. Children might have a better knowledge of him than Andrew. Either version is definitely suitable for viewing though!)

This show was designed to be used by teachers in kindergarten through grades 6-8 or so and it does a great job at that. High school would definitely be above the target age range and junior high could go either way depending on the class. Anyone trying to watch this as they would an episode of PBS Nature or BBC Natural World is likely to be disappointed as there is a prominent scholastic overtone in both the visuals and narration and it's unmistakably aimed at young children. If I were an elementary school teacher I'd definitely have this entire series on standby as it's both entertaining and full of easy-to-digest nuggets of information.