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Season 1 – Life on Our Planet

Play trailer 1:35 Poster for Season 1 – Life on Our Planet Oct 2023 Documentary Nature Play Trailer Watchlist
Watchlist Tomatometer Popcornmeter
50% Tomatometer 6 Reviews 69% Popcornmeter 100+ Ratings
The story of life's epic, 4 billion-year journey on Earth, told through its ruling dynasties, its underdogs and the cataclysmic events that reshaped it.
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Life on Our Planet — Season 1

Critics Reviews

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Hugo Rifkind The Times (UK) 10/30/2023
Freeman’s voice is of course amazing, but sometimes no amount of godly declamation can save him. “Every single thing alive today can trace its heritage back four billion years,” he tells us, which is somehow both banal and untrue, simultaneously. Go to Full Review
John Anderson Wall Street Journal 10/27/2023
A bit like signing on to a semester-long symposium on evolution, biodiversity, the history of mass extinctions and the resilience of the organism. This is not to say it isn’t thoroughly fascinating, just serious. Go to Full Review
Jack Seale Guardian 10/25/2023
2/5
Life on Our Planet is the sort of empty spectacle we no longer have time for. Go to Full Review
Joly Herman Common Sense Media 11/07/2023
3/5
This series tries to make reality into fiction, blurring lines of documentary integrity. Go to Full Review
Joel Keller Decider 10/25/2023
Life On Our Planet is a fascinating look at how life evolved on Earth, with stunning visual effects that show how long-extinct species might have lived. Go to Full Review
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Audience Reviews

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Meghan T @RT56415614 Nov 9 This is a captivating look at our planet's incredible history. The narration is on-point. See more Owen M @PopcornPunditPele Aug 3 Solid documentary. The scenes talking about prehistoric animals were too few in number and far between, the same sequences also tended to appear in multiple different episodes. That being said, Morgan Freeman’s voice is a delight and some of the approaches at viewing prehistoric life are refreshing. See more Kaya B @RT25608533 Jun 26 Incredible quality! Just awesome if you like dinosaurs or sea creatures and want to learn something. Super realistic and giving chills in every fight scene! See more david g @RT82071131 Jun 19 Agree that it was a bit repetitive and the time jumps were a little inconsistent. As for the people commenting about errors - I just took it with a grain of salt as you kinda should do for any program discussing what happened hundreds and hundreds of millions of years ago. It's a bit of a docu-tainment series. The wildlife photography is stunning and the CGI is excellent. Worth watching just for the history lesson that there is a lot more to this earth than just us and there will be long after we're gone. See more Anthony I @Salty_Tony Jun 19 Felt like a horror trailer for kids. The first 10 minutes of Chapter 5 were just a small dinosaur hiding from a bigger one—no real info, no depth. They mentioned Allosaurus lived in the Jurassic and how long it was, then moved on. If I want actual facts, I can ask ChatGPT and get a full breakdown. Making a dinosaur episode without educating the viewer is lazy. Fancy CGI and Morgan Freeman don’t cut it anymore—substance matters. See more Larry T @Kowalski1975 01/16/2025 Pluses: First, predators don’t roar at their prey like they do in many dinosaur-themed movies. Real predators save the roaring for its traditional purposes. They keep quiet when hunting. Second, CGI is excellent. Third, much attention to realism. Dinos have feathers, hair, the works. Minuses: Narration is just a tad overblown. Limited selection of prehistoric animals. Padded out with nature shots of waves, trees, etc. Every minute they fill with inexpensive nature photography is one they didn’t have to fill with horribly costly CGI. See more Read all reviews
Life on Our Planet — Season 1

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Episodes

Episode 1 Aired Oct 25, 2023 Chapter 1: The Rules of Life Evolution, competition and mass extinction; three fundamental rules drive the rise and fall of life on Earth for over four billion years. Details Episode 2 Aired Oct 25, 2023 Chapter 2: The First Frontier For billions of years, land on Earth is uninhabitable; however, in the seas, predation allows species to thrive before and after two mass extinctions. Details Episode 3 Aired Oct 25, 2023 Chapter 3: Invaders of the Land Sprawling moss, towering trees, flying insects, and limbed amphibians; early species vie for domination as the land goes from hostile to hospitable. Details Episode 4 Aired Oct 25, 2023 Chapter 4: In Cold Blood After Earth's third mass extinction, mammals' surviving ancestors rule the supercontinent Pangea; lizards soon usher in the age of reptiles. Details Episode 5 Aired Oct 25, 2023 Chapter 5: In the Shadow of Giants The formation of continents with varied environments allow for an explosion of biodiversity and turbo-charges the evolution of mighty dinosaurs. Details Episode 6 Aired Oct 25, 2023 Chapter 6: Out of the Ashes The dinosaurs meet their end with a cataclysmic asteroid impact; rising from the ashes, birds reinvent themselves into a dynasty 10,000 species strong. Details Episode 7 Aired Oct 25, 2023 Chapter 7: Inheriting the Earth Emerging from the dinosaurs' shadows, mammals go from underdogs to a global power, with game-changing adaptations that will conquer land, air and sea. Details Episode 8 Aired Oct 25, 2023 Chapter 8: Age of Ice and Fire As the Ice Age thaws, humans rise above the rest; however, the possibility of a sixth mass extinction now looms, and the ingenuity of humans may cause their downfall. Details
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Season Info

Executive Producer
Steven Spielberg, Alastair Fothergill, Keith Scholey, Darryl Frank, Justin Falvey
Network
Netflix
Rating
TV-PG
Genre
Documentary, Nature
Original Language
English
Release Date
Oct 25, 2023
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