When you imagine a visually splendorous episodic nature documentary covering all creatures great and small, then the first voice that pops into your head has surely got to be that of the legendary David Attenborough. However, if you were to select an equally-sonorous replacement, then Morgan Freeman would definitely be at the top of the list. Clearly, Netflix’s Life on Our Planet got the memo.
While the streaming service already has an established working relationship with the 97 year-old legend after drafting him in to lend his unmistakably dulcet and soothing tones to several original projects in the past, substituting the silky sounds of Academy Award winner Freeman is about as solid a swap as you could possibly hope to find.
Combining live-action footage with CGI recreations, Life on Our Planet does the deepest of dives by tracing billions of years of evolution across its eight episodes, from the earliest moments of life right through to the present day, chronicling the incredible realization that 99 percent of all species to have ever existed have been lost forever, reinforcing just how much of a speck in history we really are.
It’s fascinating stuff, and the promise of Freeman muscling into Attenborough’s turf with an assist from executive producer Steven Spielberg and effects from Industrial Light & Magic was always going to be a proposition Netflix subscribers could never turn down. As you’d expect, then, Life on Our Planet has debuted as the fourth most-watched series on the global charts, hurling a meteor straight onto the Top 10 in 83 countries.