Planet Earth (2006)

Planet Earth is an eleven-part BBC nature documentary series produced by the BBC Natural History Unit in association with the Discovery Channel and NHK. It first broadcast on BBC One on 5 March 2006, narrated by Sir David Attenborough.

Five years in the making and filmed across 64 countries, Planet Earth was the most expensive nature documentary series ever commissioned by the BBC and the first to be shot entirely in high definition. Each of the eleven episodes focuses on a different biome or habitat — from polar ice and mountain ranges to deep ocean and jungle canopy — showcasing rare and often never-before-filmed animal behaviour.

The series has been broadcast in over 130 countries and is estimated to have been seen by more than 500 million viewers worldwide. It received four Emmy Awards, a Peabody Award, and an award from the Royal Television Society. Each episode ends with a ten-minute “Planet Earth Diaries” featurette showing the challenges the film crew faced in the field.

Watch

Video source: Internet Archive — planet_earth_1_bbc · Select an episode from the panel to begin.

Episodes

Select an episode from the player above. Episodes are listed in broadcast order.

1. From Pole to Pole — A journey from the Arctic to the Antarctic reveals the effect of seasonal change on wildlife, from emperor penguins in Antarctic darkness to polar bear cubs emerging into an Arctic spring.
2. Mountains — Life in the world’s great mountain ranges, including snow leopards in the Himalayas, Gelada baboons on Ethiopian peaks, and grizzly bears in the Rockies.
3. Fresh Water — Rivers, lakes, and wetlands — just three percent of the Earth’s water — sustain a remarkable diversity of life, from Amazon river dolphins to Nile crocodiles.
4. Caves — The only major habitat not driven by sunlight: a journey into vast underground worlds inhabited by millions of bats, blind cave fish, and creatures found nowhere else on Earth.
5. Deserts — A third of the Earth’s land surface is desert. Animals such as the Bactrian camel and the desert locust survive in conditions of extraordinary heat and drought.
6. Ice Worlds — The frozen wastelands of the Arctic and Antarctic, home to polar bears, walrus, and emperor penguins, are melting faster than at any time in recorded history.
7. Great Plains — A quarter of the Earth’s land mass is open grassland, supporting the greatest gatherings of wildlife on the planet, including the largest land migration on Earth.
8. Jungles — Three percent of the Earth’s surface shelters half its species. In the competition for light and food, jungle life produces extraordinary behaviour: from birds of paradise to chimpanzees.
9. Shallow Seas — Sunlit coastal waters teem with life. Humpback whales, whale sharks, and spectacular coral reef ecosystems all depend on these productive shallows.
10. Seasonal Forests — The world’s great seasonal forests — from Siberian taiga to California’s sequoia groves — cycle through extremes of summer abundance and winter hardship.
11. Ocean Deep — The open ocean covers two thirds of the planet but is the least explored habitat on Earth. Strange creatures survive in its darkest, most extreme depths.

Copyright status

The episodes of Planet Earth (2006) on this page are hosted by the Internet Archive. They are presented here for educational purposes. The original series was produced by the BBC Natural History Unit and first broadcast on BBC One in 2006.

References

1. Fothergill, Alastair (2006). Planet Earth: As You’ve Never Seen It Before. BBC Books. ISBN 978-0-563-52212-8.
2. Attenborough, David (2006). Life on Air: Memoirs of a Broadcaster. BBC Books.
3. Silverstone, Roger (2007). “Planet Earth and the BBC”. Screen 48(4).