"Walking with Beasts" (2001) TV series

User Rating:

8.6/10   

Director:

Nigel Paterson

Writers:

Kate Bartlett (writer) &
Jasper James (writer) ...

Seasons:

1

Release Date:

15 November 2001 (UK)

Genre:

Animation | Documentary

Plot:

Using the latest digital technology, the era between the dinosaurs and man is superbly recreated by the BBC and Discovery Channel in another winning production from the coalition.

Plot Keywords:

Prehistoric | Computer Animation | Prehistoric Life

Awards:

Won Primetime Emmy. Another 2 wins & 4 nominations

Cast

Kenneth Branagh	...	Narrator (8 episodes, 2001)
Stockard Channing	...	Narrator (8 episodes, 2001)

Also Known As:

Walking with Prehistoric Beasts (USA)

Runtime:

180 min

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Certification:

Finland:S

Company:

BS Asahi

Trivia:

It is not unusual for the narrator to refer to the different kinds of animals not by their proper genus or species names, but rather with broader terms (like the name of the group they belonged to), making it hard to identify the animals more precisely. For example, the giant rhinoceros Paraceratherium is simply called an "indricothere", and there is also the bizarre plant-eater Embolotherium, which is gets to be named "brontothere". This is true for all the "Walking with..." series, but the naming method began to get prominent in this show. However it also produced several dubbing mistakes for other countries; some dubs did not translate these animal names at all, others added one or two extra letters to the end of the names, while some translations tried to use more exact names for some of the animals, mostly ending up with incorrect or out-of-use terms - this can be forgivable, since in some cases, like with the aforementioned Paraceratherium, there are a handful of different scientific names that can be used.

Quotes:

[Last lines.]
Kenneth Branagh: [narrating] We have since built museums to celebrate the past, and spend decades studying prehistoric lives. And if all this has taught us anything, it is this: no species lasts forever.

Movie Connections:

Spin off "Sea Monsters: A Walking with Dinosaurs Trilogy" (2003)

Fun to watch but more of a story than a documentation...

The idea of "Walking with Beasts" was to close part of the gap between the end of "Walking with Dinosaurs" (ending in the late Cretaceous) and today.

The story begins in the early Eocene (~55 million years ago). Why the Paleozoic (the 10 million years between the Cretaceous and the Eocene) have been left out I don't know. This was also a quite exciting time in Earth's history, just after the fall of the dinosaurs.

The series give a nice overlook of the animals that lived during the specified time. These are just short windows however, sometimes just single days within an epoch, which doesn't give much insight into the development of animals.

The amount of speculation in this series seems to be even greater than in "Walking with Dinosaurs". While we still don't know if the animals of the Eocene were single-coloured, or had spots or stars or stripes, most animals in this series had very distinct markings on their fur or feathers. But this goes even further with information about social behavior among early primates and tales of gases trapped within the local pond. These things all MIGHT have been, but watching the series gives you the impression that someone went back in time to study these animals (for a few years).

There are a few animals that have left us not only bones, but also fur and dung, like the mammoth, some sabre toothed cats and the giant ground sloth (megatherium). These creatures were recreated wonderfully.

This is another edutainment documentation from the BBC where the emphasis was put a little to much on the entertainment side. Just the same, it's not really bad (just not as good as "Life on Earth" was for example), a lot of fun to watch and it also contains a nice insight into the world of mammals.