David Attenborough fronts this 27-part UKTV commission that gives star billing to evolutionary misfits: the blood-drinking moth, the temperature-dictated crocodile, the males that give birth. Each 30-minute essay begins with a puzzle, usually the sort that makes taxonomists swear, then uses studio models, fossils and field footage to show how the anomaly is simply natural selection improvising with what it has. Shot between 2012 and 2016, the programmes were the first Attenborough series produced exclusively for the UKTV family, airing on Eden for series one, then migrating to Watch for the remaining three runs.
Budget constraints dictated the tight running time and the heavy reliance on London’s Natural History Museum collections, a restriction that turned into the show’s stylistic signature: glossy macro photography of pinned specimens dissolving into living counterparts in the wild, all stitched together by Attenborough’s scripts co-written with biologist Martha Holmes. No orchestral scores or helicopter panoramas here; the sound design is close-mic rustles and clicks, placing the viewer inside the animal’s sensory world.
The fourth-series finale, broadcast in June 2017, quietly marked the end of Attenborough’s regular multi-part television work for smaller British cable channels, shifting his subsequent focus to the BBC-Netflix axis of megabudget blue-chip projects.
Production Details
U&Eden / 4 Seasons / 27 Episodes / 2013
Main Cast
David Attenborough as Self - Presenter
