Sunday night, Discovery premiered a new highdef filmed nature/wildlife 11part mini-series called Life. Its from the same BBC crew that did Planet Earth. If you haven’t seen any of the Planet Earth series shows, find some…right away…especially if you have an HD TV. These shows are absolutely amazing. The camera work is unbelievable. I honestly don’t understand how they get that close, that much detail and such perfect shots. They seem scripted, almost like its CGI…except that there’s no digital edge to the picture, so you know its real film. Like its predecessor Planet Earth, Life is just as amazing. I wanted to recap the first episode for you to give you an idea of what an hour of this show is like. SO here goes…
Hey, this is narrated by Oprah Winfrey. I’ll miss having the stuffy English guy from Plant Earth. The opening scenes are amazing. They are so detailed, I want to pause the show and just look at each one…but then we’d be here forever, and I bet a lot of these are going to be shown again in more detail later in the show. One thing this BBC production crew is good at, its reusing shots as much as they possibly can. The intro ends and we find out that Life is brought to us by Target…really, that’s kinda sad. But hopefully it also means there’ll be less commercials, if Target gets to brand spew identify during the show. Oh, Hi Oprah!…see she really is watching over the whole planet. This episode is ‘challenges of life’, and we’re off to Kenya!
Kenya is famous for its lions…but we’re going to tell you about the cheetahs. They start right in with a pretty neat story of three brother cheetahs that hunt together…which is rare. This is when you realize this is a different kind of nature show, as then they don’t cut to some talking head in khakis to tell us WHY this is such a unique pack of animals. Instead they show us those three cheetahs awesomely track and kill an ostrich. (We watched during dinner, so thankfully they cut away from the carnage before it got to icky) Love the hunting action right off the bat.
Now with another little montage we’re off to Madagascar for more animal world challenges. Closeups of the praying mantis are amazing. And then comes THE TONGUE!! Wow, I mean, I KNOW, I’ve already gushed about how its cool camera work, but really, you have to see this. I just don’t understand how they can get these macro shots in the wild. (note to self: hey find out for the next recap and let these poor people know). After some super slo-mo tongue shots of the panther chameleon, we move on to the Venus Fly Trap. Now, here’s a plant we probably all know more than we need to know about…but this time I actually learned something new. Because of this super awesome macro close up magic camera, you can see the trigger hairs in the venus fly trap…which I honestly didn’t know were how the VFT knows so snap shut. My daughter was actually cheering for the fly trap as we’re watching. ‘Oh look mom! They fly is going to hit the hair!…oh, oh, SNAP! AWESOME!” Hee, who knew it could be so exciting.
And now we’re off to Israel to see the Ibex. They’re a grazer, and oooh LOOK BABY IBEX….something’s going to get hunted! You know they are going to show you the cute and fuzzy kids, make you fall in love and then feed one to the wolves, or have it drown. Because that’s just what nature shows do. But first…Target has to show us some penguins…oh darn looks like there’s full size commercial breaks. **sigh** I love those ‘limited-commercial-interruption’ showings…a girl can dream.
And we’re back…to the two Ibex kids, that have to negotiate a sheer cliff right into the mouth of some yet unknown predator. The suspense builds. The parents make it down, and at least the riverbank isn’t littered with predators…but something will come. Oprah has dropped to many hints at this point, for something not to happen. Awww cute, cute cute, little baby Ibex bouncing across the rocks…to its DOOOOOM! OOOOH RED FOX…RUN BABY RUUUUN! Here’s where my family goes nuts…we go back and forth. “He’ll never make it! The POOR baby’ OHH OHH Will he make it? Yes, yes, noooo. Oh, cliff! GO BABY!” Wow, he got away. Yay, baby Ibex! You know the next baby-whatever is so not going to make it. Just so we remember that ‘circle-of-life’ thing.
And now we’re in the ocean. Really awesome shots of sailfish eating sardines. Sailfish are not something you see on every nature show. Its why I like these BBC shows, they really make a point to show you things you may not have seen before. After the sailfish come real flying fish. Like the flying squirrel, they glide, more than fly…but they do it for 60 feet! Again with the amazing camera work. It looks like they just have a camera stuck on one of the fish and they are in the middle of it. Oprah tells us somebody has to work harder than flying fish? Who?
Over the ocean, and over the ice to…Antarctica. Where the seals work hard to stay alive. ‘Cause Orcas eat seals! OH NO SEAL! Of course this one isn’t a baby…so it might get a pass too. But first…commercials..I’m sorry, the Stevie Wonder part of the Punch-buggy commercial seriously makes me crack up…
Uhoh, seal…its not just one Orca, but a WHOLE POD…Oh the poor seal. He’s so done for. I can’t even type. Oh, no blood! Lucky lucky seal makes it! Only because the orcas cannot turn in tight circles. He’s not going to leave the main ice flow ever again. Everyone else can just bring him something. He’s used up all his luck. But now…enough with predator/prey…let’s move on…
To Breeding! Its the animal porn section. Hopefully the high-def, macro detail camera will keep a respectful distance. I really don’t need to see THAT much detail. Ooooh, first we’re going to talk about males and their gyrations to attract a mate. There’s this pupa, and its on the forest floor, it hatches, climbs up a tree, and then starts pumping air into its eye stalks….uh what? Its like a penis-pump…for eyestalks. Hey baby, check out my…eyes. After blowing them up, he then combs them out into just the perfect tease. In fact here…just watch this video to see it yourself. Ya! and then they fight if they think another bug might have bigger balls…on the end of their eyestalks. Oh but i guess its just a prissy slap-fight. Not like the HIPPOS! (hello queen-segue!) Yay for hippos. I call my son Hippo, so I loves me some hippos. Hippos don’t mess around…after commercials.
Dry season in Zambia…with hippos stuck in the mud. Now he’s thinking about getting some in at the hippo meat market. And it has a big bouncer at the door! Oh boy, HIPPO FIGHT! Little intimidation, little pushing…and the overlord protects his harem. And now we visit some birds with a beautiful courtship dance. I like monogamous birds, they give me hope that monogamy may actually be a natural state. After the dancing birdies, we’re into the jungles of Costa Rica to check out the Strawberry poison arrow frog who is guarding her eggs. She’s got to move her tadpoles after the commercials…
The mama frog sticks a tadpole to her back and starts up a tree…what, a tree!? This good mama puts each of her tadpoles in their own personal Bromeliad plant nursery. If she puts them in the same plant, they’d eat each other. Even after she puts them all in their own plants, she still has to feed them somehow. This dedicated mama frog will visit each plant every few days to lay an unfertilized egg for her babies to eat. Then they grow legs and just take off without a word of thanks. And speaking of motherhood being thankless…Now we’re off to watch a giant octopus. This mama lays 100,000 eggs, quits eating, tends them for 6 months, and then she dies…that’s really depressing. Backed up with out of 100,000 octopi eggs, only about 1% survive. BWAAAAHHHHHHHH Life…its not fair. On a happier note, there’s animals that can use tools. And we’ll learn all about them, after this message from Discover…
Central Brazil…it has strangely pitted rocks, formed by…POUNDING CAPUCHINS. These smart monkeys know how to use rocks to break nuts…not only do they know to break them, but they also know to leave them to dry out for a week or two, before trying to crack them. It looks like awesome stress relief. I think I might start breaking something with a rock at least once a day.WATCH YOUR TOES! Oh that first monkey looked like he was going to smash his foot! Heee, awww baby monkeys trying to crack nuts too. I’m a little confused though, do all Capuchin monkeys use tools, or just this group in Brazil? I bet the google will know, I will report back in the next recap.
To wrap up, Oprah now brings us down to the Florida keys to talk about some Bottle-nose dolphins. They are one of the most intelligent species on earth (some scientists even believe they may be smarter than humans, but for the fact they can’t talk). These Florida keys dolphins, have a mud lasso trick that’s pretty cool. One dolphin smacks his tail in the mud while swimming in a circle, thus making a mud ‘net’ and causing the fish to panic and jump…right into the other waiting dolphins mouths. I don’t know why they didn’t talk about other dolphin hunting adaptations. This is not the only one, but its pretty cool, and totally unique to the Florida Keys dolphins.
After we leave the dolphins, Oprah takes us through one last montage. This one talking about how everything rises up to the challenges of life. And that ends the first episode of Life.
Bonus: There’s a little ender that talks about the camera crew. Life took 3 years to film. And essentially, they really did just happen on this stunning footage. They had an idea of what they’d LIKE to film, and sometimes they got it, and sometimes they didn’t. Amazing.
The 2nd episode also aired on Sunday night. I will recap that one this Saturday.
Did you see Life on Sunday night? What did you think? Do you want to see more episode recaps from Stuff to Love?
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