As you may have guessed by the content of this website, I love nature shows, and I watch the discovery channel quite a bit.  I especially like watching interesting things about the world we live in.  Like most of us too, I’ve been intrigued by the commercials for this television event for weeks now.  The lead up had me salivating.  “Life” seemed like a slam dunk on the senses.  After all, the images were beautiful, the narrator, Oprah, interesting, and with the same producers of “Planet Earth”, I was sold from the beginning.  But then, I saw an episode…

I immediately got the impression that the producers thought their audience still crawl on all fours.  Dumbed down?  For sure!  Message to Discovery, your audience is smarter than you think.  Give us some credit! I understand that your argument stems from the fact that you’re producing family entertainment that can be easily accessible and understandable to any age, but you’re really missing the mark here.

Unlike its predecessor “Planet Earth”, “Life” is seemingly life-less.  The writing, quite frankly is bland…or is it that Oprah is bland?  Either way the magic isn’t there.  Don’t even get me started with their music!

What’s missing is a sense of drama, or a sense of what’s at stake.  Our planet is so unbelievably varied, so tenacious, so interconnected.  There’s a sense of the spiritual in nature.  It’s not just life and death, but a living breathing organism in itself.  Species depend on each other for survival in an intricate and delicate web.  David Attenborough, a prolific narrator, writer, and producer of these sorts of shows, is aware of this and this may be a huge factor in the success of the previous show.

Interestingly enough, a series on life really is a story of individualism and a story about self.  One asks “why am I here”.  “What’s my purpose”.  One answer, I believe, comes from John Muir, perhaps the greatest conservationist and founder of the Sierra Club.  He writes, “the clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.”  In other words, to know nature, to know life, is to know thyself.