David Attenborough, who turned 100 on May 8, has spent more than 70 years exploring the planet and its living inhabitants — filming, and marveling at, a world full of natural treasures. In the process, he's become a natural treasure himself.
As host, and as narrator, Attenborough's whispery, enthusiastic voice is instantly recognizable. And his nature series, over the decades, have been widely popular, from The Trials of Life and The Life of Birds to Planet Earth, The Blue Planet and this year's Ocean with David Attenborough.
Attenborough's first on-camera work was in the mid-1950s, as host of the BBC nature series Zoo Quest. That program wasn't shown in the United States, but a taste of it is available in the new PBS documentary, Life on Earth: Attenborough's Greatest Adventure.
Eventually, Attenborough gave up traveling the world with a film crew to become an administrator for the BBC. He commissioned such ambitious and pivotal projects as Kenneth Clark's 13-part Civilisation series — but his concept of TV eventually drove him out from behind the desk and back into the field.
I interviewed him for a book in 1991, and he said then of his BBC executive approach, "It was our responsibility to say, 'What haven't we done and why aren't we doing it?'''
And one of the things no one in TV was doing was a global TV series that told the entire story of evolution. Attenborough continued, "The wonderful thing about making natural history documentaries is that there is something, in any sequence, for everybody at every conceivable level of age, education and interest."
So he embarked upon Life on Earth, which began production 50 years ago. It took more than three years to film, visiting 40 countries and capturing more than 600 species. It was the way it was filmed, in part, that was so groundbreaking. It used new lenses from Canon, new color film from Kodak and experimented with new developments in film speeds, time-lapse and micro-photography. Life on Earth premiered on PBS in 1982, and was seen globally by some 500 million people.
This new special has Attenborough looking back on Life on Earth — and literally looking at it, as it's projected in a screening room. He beams with pride and joy, and with good reason. One sequence, perhaps the most famous of his career, has him in Rwanda, crouching a respectful distance from a mother gorilla and her offspring. He's about to begin a prepared speech about the importance of opposable thumbs, when the mother approaches and stares right into his face, while her babies crawl on top of him affectionately.
Attenborough's Greatest Adventure tells behind-the-scenes stories of the dangers Attenborough and his crew faced while filming Life on Earth. Surprisingly, most of those dangers came not from wild animals, but from humans — poachers and soldiers, gunfire in Rwanda, and threatened imprisonment in Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
It also tells the story of how some of its most amazing TV moments were filmed. That's reason enough to seek out this special, which allows Attenborough to put his amazing career into perspective. But there's also his closing message, which really got to me — and which I'll close with as well:
"Natural history television has produced an understanding in the ordinance about the importance of the natural world. It's an understanding of the part that humanity plays in the way the world operates, and the way in which we are totally dependent upon the natural world for every breath of air we take and every mouthful of food we eat. ... And if we damage the natural world we damage ourselves."
Thank you, David Attenborough, for a lifetime of priceless television.
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