Television series

Walking with Dinosaurs

Name: Walking with Dinosaurs
Genre: Documentary, Nature, History
Released: 1999
Cast: Kenneth Branagh

Before nature documentaries got a prehistoric cousin, this was the show that convinced a generation dinosaurs were real animals rather than movie monsters. Six hour-long episodes follow individual creatures — a Diplodocus, a young Tyrannosaur — through ordinary animal lives: hunting, migrating, dying. Branagh narrates extinction as biography. Groundbreaking CGI for 1999, blue-chip BBC seriousness, and still oddly moving.

TVMaze rating

8.0

If you liked this

Prehistoric Planet2022

This is the show Walking with Dinosaurs dreamed of being: Attenborough narrates the same species with two extra decades of fossil evidence, and the animation is so fluid you forget you're watching computer graphics, not real animals.

But Episodes are half the length, and Attenborough's hushed reverence lacks Branagh's theatrical, story-driven swagger — less soap opera, more science lecture.

Walking with Beasts2001no page yet

The direct sequel, same production team, same trick of turning fossils into characters — only now it's terrifying mammals and giant birds picking up where the dinosaurs left off.

But Mammals lack the sheer size and menace of dinosaurs, and the series never quite escapes its predecessor's shadow.

Jurassic Park1993

Spielberg's blockbuster took the same wonder Walking with Dinosaurs trades in and turned it into pure cinematic spectacle — the moment dinosaurs stopped being stop-motion monsters and became believable animals on screen.

But It's a thriller about dinosaurs eating people, not a nature documentary — expect screaming, not scientific narration.

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

The Lost World1925

It's the great-grandparent of every dinosaur documentary and blockbuster since — Willis O'Brien's stop-motion effects here are the direct ancestor of the techniques WWD helped bring to television seventy years later.

Silent-era stop-motion dinosaurs stomping through miniature jungles, decades before CGI — genuinely astonishing for 1925, and you can see the entire lineage of dinosaur cinema starting right here.

But It's silent, melodramatic, occasionally cringeworthy by modern standards, and the human plot is pure pulp adventure filler.

Planet Earth2006

The blue-chip nature documentary that raised the bar for everyone, including WWD's own team — jaw-dropping cinematography, epic scale, and Attenborough at his most authoritative, narrating living animals instead of extinct ones.

But No dinosaurs, obviously — these animals are alive and going about ordinary business, minus the built-in prehistoric drama.

Chased by Dinosaurs2002no page yet

Same effects team, same dinosaurs, but this time a live presenter wanders into the Mesozoic and gets chased by them — a much campier, more adventurous companion piece.

But The presenter-in-peril gimmick can feel silly and dated next to WWD's straight-faced seriousness, more theme-park ride than documentary.

Planet Earth II2016

A decade of camera technology later, this delivers even closer, more intimate wildlife footage — the same spirit of awe, sharpened by drone shots and better science.

But Structured as standalone habitat episodes rather than character-driven stories, so it lacks WWD's narrative pull.

Life2007

Attenborough at his peak, cataloguing the wildest survival strategies evolution has produced — if WWD hooked you on strange creatures doing strange things to stay alive, this delivers plenty.

But Covers similar ground to other BBC nature series, so if you've seen Planet Earth already it may feel familiar.

Africa2013no page yet

A continent-spanning epic from the same BBC Natural History Unit, packed with sequences as strange and dramatic as anything dinosaurs got up to sixty-five million years ago.

But Narrower geographic focus than WWD's global sweep, and there's no extinct megafauna left to gawk at.

Blue Planet II2017

The ocean gets the same jaw-dropping treatment, with creatures so strange they might as well be extinct — deep-sea footage that rivals anything WWD imagined about the Mesozoic.

But All water, no land — if it was specifically dinosaurs you loved, this scratches a different itch entirely.

Dinosaur2000no page yet

Same technical ambition as WWD — photorealistic CGI dinosaurs composited into real landscape footage — but pointed at family adventure instead of documentary, complete with dialogue and a rescue plot.

Genuinely gorgeous, painterly CGI dinosaurs wandering real backdrops, made with the same digital tools WWD pioneered on television — just repurposed for a tearjerking Disney survival story.

But The dinosaurs talk, there's a moral about found family, and it's aimed squarely at children rather than dino-nerds craving realism.

Dinosaur 132014no page yet

Same subject, opposite angle — instead of imagining dinosaurs as living animals, this is about the very human, very messy fight over who owns their bones once they're dug up.

A real courtroom drama about Sue the T-rex, the FBI raid that seized her, and the paleontologists whose lives were upended — it turns fossil-hunting into a genuine thriller.

But There isn't a single moving dinosaur in it — this is about lawyers, bureaucracy and obsession, not spectacle.