4 out of 5

Director: Various crazy nature people

This review is for the Attenborough narration. Personal bias – irrational dislike of Winfrey. As such I’ll be talking more about the images and general purpose of the narration. Life is gorgeous. The crew behind this doc knows its game, having the time and money to capture the right footage and the screen-time to do it justice. However, this feels more like your average documentary (albeit with amazing camera technology), falling short of the high-bar set by the overwhelming Planet Earth. As with that collection, there’s something for all interests here. There’s even a spot just on plants, which is ridiculously fascinating. And there’s no shortage of jaw-dropping footage. Each episode has at least one moment that causes your head to spin, with the remaining pieces far from feeling like filler. The making-ofs are interesting, but you end up being able to tell during the episode which piece will get the making-of, and that can be a little disappointing, like they’re purposefully making something the star of the show instead of letting everything feel equally momentous. Which is what kept this a blink shy of astounding. Planet Earth had a very defined feeling to it, and managed to use the narration purposefully, not just explaining things but giving it purpose within the context of the episodes – with series like this you can’t stray too far from environmental themes, but anyhow – whereas with Life we get narration that keeps telling us the theme is the struggle for life but it doesn’t feel like a proper tie. It’s just a nature documentary, a little more predictable. The music, the editing, the dialogue, it’s fairly routine. Tough work for the crew? Absolutely – and again, this is still worth purchasing (on blu ray is a must). But instead of playing like these are meaningful things we’re witnessing, just own up and say “look at this.”