I am a huge fan of well-made nature documentaries.
Especially productions with David Attenborough as narrator are a joy to watch (e.g. Life, Planet Earth, The Life of Mammals etc.). I think his style, experience and way of explaining things are beyond comparison with other narrators.
I have watched almost every recent BBC production covering animals, plants or nature in general. But here lies the problem, I am running out of good, high quality documentaries to watch. It's most enjoyable if for the whole docu there is no human or anything human-made visible.
I tried a few american docus (PBS, National geographic or Discovery Channel), just to find that they are just horrible. They were all so flashy and only about "which animal is most extreme / deadly / greatest killer", generally emphasizing and exaggerating how "dangerous" nature is. "Experts" going on and on about the dangers of nature, CGI animations repeatedly showing the same process of how "deadly" a leopard or whatever animal can be, zooming in and out of the action, repeating all of this again and again. (which is something i noticed in other non-nature american docus as well, repetitions over repetitions just to stretch the length of the show) I am still open minded, if you can recommend any good american docus, feel free to post.
Does anybody here share my affection with high quality documentaries? Are there any good ones besides BBC productions? Can you recommend any good websites where I can find good docus?
PS: i am not american or british, so i can not just use hulu or the like.
Do you have the ability to get Netflix? They have tons of nature documentaries streaming on-demand. I just watched one yesterday called Beavers Oh, and it was a Discovery Channel job.. Not everything they do is flashy.
Sadly nothing really tops BBC or David Attenborough for Nature documentaries. You said you watched his recent work? But did you watch some of his earlier works? Which are just as fantastic and available online through torrent sites. Wiki has a list of his most reknown documentaries and I recommend watching most of them because I doubt you watched all of them Life on Earth (1979) The Living Planet (1984) The Trials of Life (1990) Life in the Freezer (1993) The Private Life of Plants (1995) The Life of Birds (1998) The Life of Mammals (2002) Life in the Undergrowth (2005) Life in Cold Blood (2008)
These are the ones where he does the casting and narration directly, and they are fantastic. I highly recommend The Private Life of Plants, and I dont think you watched that.
There are plenty of free documentary sites, you can even search them up on TL. But nothing beats a good torrent site, I highly recommend MVGroup and demonoid.
I second The Private Life of Plants it was great. Attenborough can make seemingly mundane things so interesting - I found myself engrossed by mountain-top moss in Tasmania when watching The Private Life of Plants
I wish I could help cos I am also a huge fan of nature doccos, but it's hard to top Attenborough, and even when you do see some that are almost as good it's hard to remember the title of them or who they were by.
Just look up the TV Guide for Animal Planet and Discovery Channel for anything that is cited as a nature documentary and check them all out
It is probably the best nature documentary I've seen so far. It is utterly engaging. I have seen most of Attenborough's stuff which are also excellent (The Life of series especially).
I recommend Inside Nature's Giants, it's a short series with serious experts, Richard Dawkins included. They dissect four animals (whale, giraffe, elephant and crocodile), show traces of evolution, etc.
On May 30 2010 00:32 The6357 wrote: how does netflix work? do they deliver dvd to you or do you just dl movies online?
Actually both. You sign up for a plan that includes 1-4 DVD deliveries and then unlimited downloads. The downloads are never new releases though except a few TV shows.
Didn't read all the replies but the best doc on nature and earth in general is BBC's documentary called Planet Earth, watch it in HD if you can, utterly amazing
On May 30 2010 00:44 samachking wrote: Sadly nothing really tops BBC or David Attenborough for Nature documentaries. You said you watched his recent work? But did you watch some of his earlier works? Which are just as fantastic and available online through torrent sites. Wiki has a list of his most reknown documentaries and I recommend watching most of them because I doubt you watched all of them Life on Earth (1979) The Living Planet (1984) The Trials of Life (1990) Life in the Freezer (1993) The Private Life of Plants (1995) The Life of Birds (1998) The Life of Mammals (2002) Life in the Undergrowth (2005) Life in Cold Blood (2008)
These are the ones where he does the casting and narration directly, and they are fantastic. I highly recommend The Private Life of Plants, and I dont think you watched that.
There are plenty of free documentary sites, you can even search them up on TL. But nothing beats a good torrent site, I highly recommend MVGroup and demonoid.
sadly i already watched all of these.
you are all just confirming my fears of running out of good docus, but thanks for the tips
I hate to be a pessimist, but yes, you probably are running out of wildlife docus. It's a very specialised field with very high costs. American channels like Discovery and National Geographic tend to get by with re-editing and re-packaging old footage into more "modern", "sexy" forms (Jaws, Paws and Claws etc.) Other channels with even lower budgets focus on easy to shoot subjects (Downsize My Pet).
If I were you, I would search among the documentary festivals. There are still people out there who are dedicated enough to spend years getting amazing footage who then edit it together and enter it in festivals and competitions.
EPT![[image loading]](http://www.abload.de/img/drtj9u4a.png)
Oh, and it was a Discovery Channel job.. Not everything they do is flashy.
