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Documentary series · BBC

Life on Earth

1979 British nature documentary television series

Verification status: Imported automatically from public Wikidata and Wikipedia records; not yet reviewed by an editor. Fields we could not find are marked “Not verified”.

Research date: 2026-11-08

Synopsis

Life on Earth: A Natural History by David Attenborough is a British television natural history series made by the BBC in association with Warner Bros. Television and Reiner Moritz Productions. It was transmitted in the UK from 16 January 1979.

During the course of the series presenter David Attenborough, following the format established by Kenneth Clark's Civilisation and Jacob Bronowski's The Ascent of Man (both series which he designed and produced as director of BBC2), travels the globe in order to trace the story of the evolution of life on the planet. Like the earlier series, it was divided into 13 programmes (each of around 55 minutes' duration). The executive producer was Christopher Parsons and the music was composed by Edward Williams.

At a cost exceeding £1 million ($1.2 million), it was an immense project that involved filming over 100 locations around the world and took three years in the making by a team of 30 people with the help of more than 500 scientists. Highly acclaimed as a milestone in the history of British wildlife television, it established Attenborough as not only the foremost television naturalist, but also an iconic figure in British cultural life. It is the first in Attenborough's Life series of programmes and was followed by The Living Planet (1984).

Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Key facts

Official title
Life on Earth
Alternative titles
Not verified
Original release
1979-01-16 – 1979-04-10
Country of production
United Kingdom
Language
English
Genres
nature documentary
Seasons
Not verified
Episodes
13
Directors
Not verified
Producers
Not verified
Production company
Not verified
Presenters
David Attenborough
Official website
Not verified
Official trailer
Not verified

Streaming

Listed service
BBC
Original or licensed
Original — public records list BBC as the original network or distributor (BBC Two).
Available now in UK
Not yet checked
Available now in Ireland
Not yet checked
Available now in US
Not yet checked
Past availability
Not verified

Episodes, events and timeline

Episode titles, summaries, running times, key events and a timeline have not been researched for this series yet. We'll add them only once they can be checked against reliable sources.

Sources