Month: April 2019

Some people might complain that Attenborough (and his team) got the order of programmes all wrong: the series should start like “Trials” with the start of new life (Flowering, programme 3) being followed by the one about this life leaving home to, literally, strike root far from its parent (Travelling, programme 1) and ending with the new plant awaiting the chance to reach adulthood (Growing, programme 2). All of these programmes belonged to the first disk of the box set. The current order, they would claim, making the story rather incoherent.

They might say that the second disk consists of rather incoherent material and having a coherent story on the first one would lead to inconsistency. But the second disk actually forms logical order: Starting with the social struggle (which might form a logical follow up to the plant growing up), it continues with various plants living together leading to co-operation and even parasitism and ending (in episode 3) with plants overcoming even the harshest of environments (too cold, too wet, too dry or too changeable) apart from the onslaught of humans which is mentioned only in the final minutes.

The most likely explanation, for this unusual order, is probably the fact that the key to making the series is the technical breakthrough of time-lapse filming due to improved computer technology. To make it even more conspicuous they put this programme forward, making it central to the series, dropping a bomb shell at the beginning. Having flowers as a central point might have made this technology seem rather insignificant because filming them had already been possible for decades. This meant any otherwise logical order would have to be sacrificed so Attenborough’s introduction to the next episode was scrapped. Instead of a continuous sequence of episodes, where one ends with an introduction to the next, there is no indication of any follow-up among the programmes.

Did they sacrifice a typical Attenborough series with a neat flow of events for a breathtaking start of a series? Should they have used this method or the typical Attenborough one? The answer must depend on personal taste, yet despite any possible misgivings due to the above few would argue against the series being full of mind-boggling technical wizardry that makes the series unforgettable.

Original air date: 15 February 1995

Original air date: 8 February 1995

Original air date: 1 February 1995

The image shows how the story develops from being a regular introduction to plant communities to drift towards grasslands.

Original air date: 25 January 1995

The outline shows a relatively complicated programme where the main focus is on the pollinators. Being about the start of a new plant it could easily be argued that this should have been the starting episode.

Original air date: 18 January 1995

Original air date: 11 January 1995

Introduction

This series marks a turning point in the Life Collection: for the first time computer technology is being used as a standard practice.

Unavoidably a lot of the sound in the series is based on sound effects, the plants live in a silent world but Attenborough’s people decided without sound effects the series would be rather dull. In any other series such decisions would be questionable but here they are probably vital for the scenes not to be completely silent apart from him talking.
The audience may have wondered about the word “Private” in the title. It is made quite clear in the first scene what Attenborough means, and even more so in his reflections: Plants living on a very different time-scale from ours live a life that we don’t sense. Speeding up things is necessary to comprehend what is happening.
Despite the series being predominantly about plants it does also necessarily involve other organisms in important (even leading) roles. Insects and mammals play a big role and fungi are in the main leading role apart from the plants themselves. To make the point quite plain at start: Fungi are neither plants nor animals, they have a molecular structure quite unique to themselves and belong to their own kingdom. However, playing a vital role in plant ecology they show up numerous times in the series.

The series consists of six programmes of which the first three are about plants in general but the rest are about them in a wider context.