I enjoyed the series - this is such a fascinating subject for sure. As others have said though, condensing so much into a few episodes means at times it's just scratching the surface.
My main irritation though was the tone - it's pitched mainly at a school age audience is my guess. Every event has to have dramatic music behind it to make sure you understand whether it's a Sad Thing or a Wonderful Thing, the script at times is very silly - 'the world had become so hostile that to plant life is must have seemed a hopeless struggle, but just as they were on the point of giving up the struggle, they realised they had a friend, and a friend who wanted to help. And that friend was called...'. Cut to Packham staring resolutely into the camera. 'Fungus.'
It also gives the impression at times that evolution always had the aim to create humans, and that to do so it needed a lot of help from random disasters, a bit of a Lord Of The Rings quest. In fact humans are just the random place to which all the random disasters led.
But enjoyable in small doses (the music really gets to you after about 30 minutes).
My main irritation though was the tone - it's pitched mainly at a school age audience is my guess. Every event has to have dramatic music behind it to make sure you understand whether it's a Sad Thing or a Wonderful Thing, the script at times is very silly - 'the world had become so hostile that to plant life is must have seemed a hopeless struggle, but just as they were on the point of giving up the struggle, they realised they had a friend, and a friend who wanted to help. And that friend was called...'. Cut to Packham staring resolutely into the camera. 'Fungus.'
It also gives the impression at times that evolution always had the aim to create humans, and that to do so it needed a lot of help from random disasters, a bit of a Lord Of The Rings quest. In fact humans are just the random place to which all the random disasters led.
But enjoyable in small doses (the music really gets to you after about 30 minutes).