Favourite science or nature documentaries

What is your favourite documentary relating to science/nature/evolution or any related subject?

My all time favourite has to be the Walking With Franchise (which introduced me to the theory of evolution as a child), though Planet Earth 2 is pretty great as well.

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We’ve been enjoying the original Planet Earth lately (looking forward to resuming it after taking a break for Christmas movies). I’ll have to look into 2 as well. The Netflix “Our Planet” series had some amazing footage too, and “Planet Earth” keeps reminding me of it because both are voiced by David Attenborough, but “Our Planet” is strongly focused on climate change.

“Raising the Dinosaur Giant” is an episode of PBS “Nature” that we liked lately – about possibly the biggest dinosaur species found. It’s also voiced by David Attenborough, since he’s apparently pretty good at that. :smiley:

As a kid I liked the “Really Wild Animals” series with an animated globe character that was voiced by Dudley Moore. It seems a bit cheesy now but my kids enjoy it. I’m open for suggestions for nature documentaries that are good for young kids (i.e. not too much carnage) without being completely dumbed down.

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My favorite are the BBC series narrated by David Attenborough Private Life of Plants and Life on Earth. The private life of plants especially shows to me how God’s creation actually works - symbioses. I cannot see how two separate species can evolve who are mutually interdependent.

If you’re fond of the Planet Earth series (ETA, is “series” the plural of “series”?..I think it is), there’s a similar doc on Netflix called “One Strange Rock.” The added wrinkles are that (1) the principal narrator is Will Smith, and (2) the show also interviews several astronauts, who all talk about the awe-inspiring perspective of seeing the earth from orbit. It’s maybe eight episodes, and I really enjoyed it…always thought Mr. Smith was a pretty likable & engaging guy.

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When my oldest daughter was about two, she watched The March of the Penguins almost every day for about a year. When she woke up in the morning she would get her sippy cup of millk and say “My pengs?” It was super cute, and I consequently memorized the whole movie, so I’ll count it as my favorite.

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While it might be worthy of a few criticisms, I was very intrigued by Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Cosmos series. It instilled in me a new level of wonder for the universe and creation. There was a particular segment where he explained some of the mechanics of evolution at a high level, and he did so in a way that made sense to me. This may have been the first time I thought evolution made sense at all.

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All-timer I don’t know, but I enjoyed the recent Nat Geo series “One Strange Rock” hosted by Will Smith. It was practically a list of all the improbable and unique occurrences that went into making our planet. It seems to be available on Netflix:

https://www.netflix.com/title/81071666

Two in particular stand out for me. One is The Universe:

Another one, not so much concerning nature or evolution, but more along the lines of engineering, is Air Crash Investigation. It gives you a really good feel for the amount of rigour and quality control that goes into science and technology, especially in situations where getting things wrong, even in small ways, can kill people, and it’s quite impressive in demonstrating the lengths that investigators and regulators go towards making our skies safer: