Television series

Our Planet

Name: Our Planet
Genre: Documentary, Nature
Released: 2019
Cast: David Attenborough

David Attenborough's love letter and warning shot in one: eight hours of the most spectacular wildlife footage ever shot, married to a blunt argument that the wild places on screen are vanishing as you watch. It's Netflix money and BBC craft, gorgeous enough for a Sunday roast and pointed enough to ruin your mood afterward. For anyone who wants awe with a guilty conscience attached.

TVMaze rating

8.1

If you liked this

Planet Earth II2016

The gold standard this show is chasing — same team, same drone-and-macro camera wizardry, but slightly less doom-laden and more purely, gob-smackingly beautiful. The iguana-versus-snakes chase alone is worth the runtime.

But Less explicit about climate change, so if you wanted the activism front and centre, this feels comparatively toothless.

Blue Planet II2017

Everything Our Planet does for land and sky, this does for oceans, with footage of deep-sea creatures so strange they look like concept art. Attenborough at his most delighted.

But Six episodes of ocean life can blur together if you're not naturally drawn to fish and coral.

David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet2020no page yet

The most personal thing Attenborough has made — his own career used as a horrifying timeline of ecological collapse, then a genuinely hopeful final act. Feels like a culmination.

But It's a memoir crossed with a warning, so the wildlife footage takes a back seat to Attenborough talking directly to camera.

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Koyaanisqatsi1983

Same planetary alarm, same reverence for landscape, but strips away Attenborough's voice entirely — proof the images alone can carry the warning.

No narrator, no dialogue, no facts — just time-lapse landscapes and collapsing cityscapes set to Philip Glass, building the same argument about humanity's impact through pure image and rhythm.

But Zero exposition and a trance-like pace; some will find it mesmerizing, others will find it an hour and a half of nothing happening.

Planet Earth2006

The original blueprint — slower, less urgent, but the footage that first proved nature docs could look like cinema. Still holds up as pure spectacle.

But Feels dated next to newer 4K/drone work, and there's no real environmental framing at all.

Frozen Planet2011

Polar bears, penguins, and vanishing ice shot with real ambition — this is the series that made Attenborough's climate warnings impossible to ignore.

But Relentlessly cold and white; if you want variety of landscape this narrows the palette considerably.

The Blue Planet2001no page yet

The one that started the modern ocean-doc boom. Watching it now is like seeing the rough draft of a genre that's since become an art form.

But Picture quality and pacing are visibly of their era — this is a history lesson as much as entertainment.

Life2007

Structured around evolutionary survival strategies rather than geography, which makes for some of the wildest individual sequences in the Attenborough canon.

But The evolutionary framing occasionally feels like a school lecture bolted onto beautiful footage.

Chasing Coral2017

A single-issue deep dive — bleaching reefs, filmed with obsessive technical ingenuity — that gives you the specific science Our Planet only gestures at.

But Narrower and sadder than a series; no variety of animals or landscapes to lighten the blow.

Microcosmos1996

Same immersive, camera-as-character philosophy and conservation instinct, just miniaturized — it swaps scale and species while keeping the wonder intact.

A French documentary that does to insects what Our Planet does to elephants and whales — snails, beetles, and ants filmed with such extreme, patient macro photography that a garden becomes an alien world.

But No narration beyond ambient sound and minimal French text; a slow, meditative watch rather than a fact-packed one.

Meerkat Manor2006

Same wild animals, same documentary footage, but the register flips from solemn environmental epic to trashy, addictive reality television.

Real wild meerkats, real footage, but cut and narrated like a soap opera — feuds, deaths, betrayals, cliffhangers. Gloriously silly and surprisingly moving once you're attached to the cast.

But Deliberately anthropomorphized and melodramatic — anyone who wants scientific seriousness will find it borderline tacky.