Shark Bytes
Boring, dull and not even good science. Money could have been better spent elsewhere. Spawned the even more dull and expensive 'Blue Planet' and now the HD 'Planet Earth'. The dumbing down of BBC Documentaries started here.
Not to mock impassioned scientists, but almost anything about dinosaurs, beyond the fact they had bones, is "speculative". I know you get worked up about your pet theories, but this was how many millions of years ago? There may not be a good reason to believe things were as depicted in the show, but IMHO there wasn't good reason to believe they were not. Anyway, I spotted a fin in the first series, in the scene where two raptors tear apart something unfortunate. Thus far, the computer effects had been seamless, but they couldn't handle fast-moving dinosaurs. The raptors bounced around the screen like they were weightless. I swear, the director left in a shot from a geek playing with his joystick: "Look. If you pull it this way, the dinosaurs spin to the right. You pull it this way, and they spin to the left." Then the talking heads in the beasts series ruined the illusion for me. Half the fun of the first series was pretending you were watching a typical, live-action BBC documentary, breathlessly narrated by someone who sounded like David Attenborough.
It jumped when my son & I visited Dr. Michael Brett-Surman at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, and he went on a rather impassioned (for a paleontologist) tirade about how horribly ill-researched and inaccurate the entire series was; that they clearly decided what kinds of scenes they wanted to portray, and THEN went to ask scientists about their accuracy. Several paleontologists who said, "no, what you're doing is completely false" were then listed as contributing consultants-- regardless of the fact that they were actively rejecting what was being presented. It's really too bad, because the series is INCREDIBLY compelling and entertaining-- even if it is just largely speculative! My one other quibble would be that Kenneth Branaugh's narration in the earlier episodes is a little too "stagy"; a little too overdone. It's kind of loud and on the brassy side, which isn't comfortable in a documentary. It pulls the viewer/listener out of involvement with the subject matter, and makes them think of the narrator as a specific person, and become involved with them. Not what you want in this form.
A Canadian POV on our American neighbours is that many of them have lived very All-American lives and simply aren't accustomed to dealing with ANYTHING that isn't from their local Tri State Area let alone from parts far-flung. Manhattanites might make fun of Midwestern or rural or even next door New Jersey accents. Americans just prefer things to be American and if some things aren't, they will spend the dollars to make it so. Apart from some PBS & BBC-America shows, foreign i.e. non-American voices are mainly used for comic relief. The US cable network that carried Dinos probably didn't want its audience to think some Monty Python guy was telling them about saurian defecation. The actor used was Capt. Sisko from Star Trek Deep Space Nine. I was able to see both the UK & US versions and the re-voicing was NOT a fatal flaw. Look at it this way, without the rework millions fewer would've seen this fine series.
Forgive my Australian incredulity, but why on earth did this magnificent programme require a version with American narration?
I've seen the American-narrated version, not the British, but it's a brilliant documentary. It brings not only the ancient creatures to life, but their environments (which have changed greatly over the millions of years). The dinosaurs have been brought back to life so realistically that the individual deaths shown are even poignant at times.
Honestly, it never really jumped. But my cousin taped this for my dinosaur-freak nephew who lives with us and man!!! Four hours of this stuff is enough to drive a sane person mad!!!
Simply Brilliant the entire run and subsequent sequals. I have to admit it was a bit dodgy with the eskimos chasing the Mammoths in the pre-historic one but the imagination behind these are stunning.
Straightforward and entertaining documentary throughout its run. Can't say that it ever jumped at any point.. had me fascinated the whole time.
I waited through 2 weeks of advertisements for this show and I still missed the beginning. When I remembered, I quickly turned to the channel...and what do I see? A Brontosaurus taking a cr*p and dung beetles chowing down. O.k. I'll change the channel for a few minutes and hopefully it will get more interesting. I tune back about 10 minutes later and see the mating ritual of two stegosaurs. And I'm thinking "how could anyone know that if there wasn't anyone around at the time?" That's when I realised this was nothing more then a "Jurassic Park" rip-off. This show jumped the shark millions of years ago.
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