A slate of new shows has been announced by the BBC to mark the 100th birthday of Sir David Attenborough this May.
Making Life on Earth: Attenborough’s Greatest Adventure will reflect on the making of the hit series Life on Earth, while a five-part series called Secret Garden sees Attenborough dive into the hidden worlds and remarkable wildlife thriving within Britain’s gardens.
There will then be a celebratory live event on the big day itself, Friday 8th May, featuring the BBC Concert Orchestra and special guests at the Royal Albert Hall in London, titled David Attenborough’s 100 Years on Planet Earth.
“It’s impossible to overstate what Sir David Attenborough has given us,” said Jack Bootle, the BBC’s Head of Commissioning for Specialist Factual.
“His programmes have not only defined Science and Natural History broadcasting, but they have also changed how we see our planet and our place within it,” he commented. “This special week is a celebration of an extraordinary milestone, and of a body of work that continues to inspire awe, curiosity and care for the natural world. It’s also a moment for all of us at the BBC to say thank you to David — for his generosity, for his brilliance, and for a lifetime spent bringing the wonders of nature into our homes.”
Alongside the brand new programming, specially-chosen episodes from some of Attenborough’s most loved landmark series – including Planet Earth II, Seven Worlds, One Planet and Frozen Planet II – will air on BBC One in the UK in the week leading up to his birthday.
A special collection featuring more than 40 series presented by Sir David will also be available to stream on BBC iPlayer, ranging from Zoo Quest to his most recent series like Kingdom, Parenthood and Attenborough and the Giant Sea Monster.
Here’s a look ahead at the special new shows we’ll be looking forward to:
Making Life on Earth: Attenborough’s Greatest Adventure
In 1976, production began on David Attenborough’s Life on Earth. No-one had ever attempted a natural history series on this scale before. This is the remarkable story behind one of the BBC’s most famous wildlife blockbusters. A three-year, hair-raising odyssey around the world, travelling to 40 countries, across a million miles, and filming over 600 species.
Making Life on Earth: Attenborough’s Greatest Adventure goes behind-the-scenes on this ground-breaking landmark series, featuring exclusive interviews with David Attenborough and other members of the original crew. With fascinating insights, they reveal the highs and lows of filming the series during a truly exciting moment in television history, when global jet travel and colour filming were still in their infancy. Along the way, the crew encountered multiple challenges, including a coup in the Comoros, being shot at in Rwanda and threats from Saddam Hussein’s army in Iraq. Broadcast in 1979 and watched by 500 million people worldwide, it confirmed David’s reputation as the most successful and influential wildlife filmmaker of our time. His astonishing encounter with gorillas in the mountains of Rwanda for this series is frequently voted one of the top TV moments of all time.
Secret Garden
In Wild Isles and Wild London, David showed us the remarkable wildlife dramas playing out in the British countryside and on the streets of our capital city. Now, in Secret Garden, he’s turning his attention to Britain’s backyards.
Over five episodes – set in five very different gardens across the UK – David reveals the lives of the often charming, occasionally daring, always secretive animals that inhabit the hidden world right on our doorsteps. Theirs is no cosy existence – even in these beautiful and seemingly genteel surroundings the rules of the wild still operate.
From pine martens in the Western Highlands to dormice in South Wales, swallows in the Lake District to otters in Oxfordshire and blue tits in Bristol, the series reveals not just a rich and surprising diversity of life but also how each species finds its own way to live alongside us.
Through meeting the gardeners that have created these wild oases, we discover how our nation of animal lovers and gardeners can do their bit to save struggling species. Eighty per cent of Britons have access to a garden, and together they cover an area greater than all of our national nature reserves combined – so what we do in our own backyards has an impact not only on the animals that live there, but also on whole populations.
You’ll never look at your garden in the same way again.
David Attenborough’s 100 Years on Planet Earth
In celebration of David’s 100th birthday on Friday 8 May, BBC One will bring the nation together for a live event honouring his ground-breaking career at the forefront of natural history storytelling.
Held on his birthday at London’s Royal Albert Hall, the event will take audiences on a journey through a century of exploration and discovery in the natural world, seen through the prism of David’s extraordinary life. It will feature dramatic wildlife stories, accompanied by live music from his programmes, alongside spoken reflections from public figures and leading advocates for the natural world.
Accompanied by the BBC Concert Orchestra, it will feature original compositions from some of David’s best-known landmark series. Alongside the music, guests will include some of those he has collaborated with from the world of conservation and wildlife filmmaking.
