Attenborough interview

Ed Yong has an interesting interview with Sir David Attenborough, which worth a read if you enjoy his nature documentaries (and what discerning mind doesn't?).

The version of the Planet Earth documentary series available through Netflix here in the US differs from the version aired here by the Discovery Channel in 2007. The Netflix version has Attenborough narrating, and although the lines are probably identical to those said by Sigourney Weaver in the Discovery Channel version, the Attenborough version seems much serious and informative to me.

Nevertheless, on rewatching it I still consider Planet Earth to inferior to Attenborough's "Life" series of documentaries, or the Blue Planet series made by the people who later did Planet Earth. Planet Earth, despite some great footage, never seems to me to have the same level of focus or information content of these other series. The rapid changes in shots and scenes in Planet Earth make it seem like it was put together by someone with an attention deficit disorder, or that it was aimed at an audience whose attention span is measured in tens of seconds. But perhaps their is a niche for a wildlife documentary aimed at non-documentary watchers?

Anyway, Attenborough never ceases to amaze me. At the release of this years "Life in Cold Blood" series he was 82 years old and was still jaunting around the world into all sorts of inhostipatable environments. This year he is behind one of the BBC's Darwin "The Genius of Evolution" season (marking the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin).