Blue planet seas of life soundtrack series#

1979’s Life on Earth was scored by Edward Williams, and The Living Planet was scored by Elizabeth Parker, but The Trials of Life was scored by the great George Fenton, and he carried the torch of excellence for many years afterwards through his work on groundbreaking series such as Blue Planet, Planet Earth, Frozen Planet, and more. Musically, the gold standard for nature documentaries has always been the BBC. It looks to feature some absolutely astonishing cinematography, and will include a hybrid of both computer-generated imagery and live-action film.

It’s executive-produced by Steven Spielberg, is narrated by Morgan Freeman, and ambitiously attempts to look at the multi-billion year history of the world, from the time of the dinosaurs to the present day. What else is there really left to say about polar bears or blue whales? The latest such documentary to be released is Life On Our Planet, which will begin airing on Netflix at the end October 2023. Now, everyone is getting in on the act Attenborough and the BBC are still making them, of course, and they are doing them magnificently, but in recent years Netflix and National Geographic and Disney Nature and seemingly dozens of other companies are getting in on the act too, to the point where I wonder whether we might be getting a little over-saturated.

The first one I remember watching as it aired was The Living Planet in 1984, followed by The Trials of Life six years later in 1990. When I was a kid, the only nature documentaries I saw were made by the BBC Natural History Unit, they were narrated by Sir David Attenborough, and they came out once every couple of years to great fanfare and acclaim. I don’t know whether it’s my imagination or not, but there seem to be more nature documentary series right now than ever before.

Blue planet seas of life soundtrack