Planet Earth Live

paul k

Well-Known Member
I was really looking forward to this and although some of the photography was good I'm really disappointed by the very low level of the commentary, anthropomorphic twaddle for the most part, will the baby bears "Honey" and "Jewel" (or something like that) survive the night, we haven't seen them today, they've probably frozen to death, then joy of joys, here they are all cuddly and fine. Oh yes, unbelievably lions eat baby animals - some viewers might find this upsetting!!!

The BBC were rightly well known for making superb wildlife films under the care of people like David Attenborough but since "celebrities" have been involved with the process and the move to this level of presentation in Springwatch and Autmunwatch these are really very little different to the cr*p shown on some American channels like Nat Geo Wild where recently a chameleon was featured in a programme titled "African Killers".

I don't expect the Beeb to change as they're going for the mass market and celebs get viewers but it's disappointing nonetheless.
 
I totally agree. I used to enjoy watching wildlife programs but these days they are applying human emotions to the animals, even giving them human names then making it more like a soap opera with a mini drama every 5 minutes. Definitely spoils what is excellent camera work. Bring back David Attenborough!

Mulac
 
I couldn't agree with you more, Paul. They're appealing to the mass audience and it's very irritating watching and listening to output generated for lesser intellects.
Will
 
It is appalling. Utterly dreadful.

I have had some exposure to the recent crop of wildlife film makers, including the current team doing Planet Earth Live. They appear to be very heavily influenced by American trained production staff, who have all been schooled to take as articles of absolute faith (i) that the audience can only pay attention for 3-4 mins at most; (ii) that audiences cannot cope with ambiguity or uncertainty and (iii) anthropomorphism, mawkish sentimentality and celebrity driven emotion are justified (indeed absolutely necessary) in order to attract audiences in the first place. The thinking seems to be that wildlife footage is somehow highbrow and unpalatable, and therefore needs to be broken into manageable nuggets ans heavily sweetened. The sad thing is that the camera teams themselves usually hate it, and complain bitterly.

The root problem seems to be that those calling the shots further up the food chain are life-long media types, who have generally risen up from other branches of the system - in particular reality shows and reality-entertainment shows. They only understand that paradigm, and don't really 'get' natural history. They appreciate that a demand exists for good nature programming, but don't quite know how to meet the demand - so fall back on what they know best: live, or pseudo-live reality style shows with clearly defined characters and obvious story arcs. They are often genuinely baffled when it doesn't work.

The analogy to the stalking world would be expecting highly successful urban landscape gardeners to be any good at managing a Highland estate... You sort of have to feel sorry for them!
 
Some great footage, but the commentary, utter rubbish.
Was it aimed at pre-school children?

Bring back David Attenborough, and yes i know he is nearly 100 years old, but quite frankly there isn't another wildlife presenter that comes close.
 
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I must be getting to the 'grumpy old man' stage as I have now logged an official complaint with the BBC about the way Planet Earth Live is presented.

Mulac
 
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I must be getting to the 'grumpy old man' stage as I have no logged an official complaint with the BBC about the way Planet Earth Live is presented.

Mulac
good man,if everyone did this they may just take note (ok,off to lie down in a dark room now)
 
Me too - and it's the first time I've felt moved to do that. I work abroad and get subjected to an amount of American drivel on Nat Geo Wild which I view in the same way as Mungo suggests and always comforted myself by telling my American and Canadian colleagues that the Beeb (and British audiences) was so much better but I'm going to have to eat my words when I go back as we appear to have sunk to their very low level.
 
We had another example of this poor BBC attitude to factual information today in a generally good Countryfile programme based around the red deer of Exmoor where they even ate venison and talked about antlers, showing some really excellent examples of local antlers and comparing them with Scottish heads. Where did it all go wrong? Well they then moved to a piece on falconry where the introduction portrayed a situation where birds of prey in the UK were hanging on by a thread and suffering at the hands of gamekeepers and pigeon fanciers (although the policeman did say there were some responsible shoots) whereas the truth is actually that most birds of prey have never been more numerous or widespread in the UK than they currently are and certainly not as widespread for at least 100 years, particularly the goshawk and peregrine, the two species that they concentrated on.
 
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