| Country: | United States |
| Language: | English |
| Num Seasons: | 1 |
| Num Episodes: | 8 |
| Narrator: | Morgan Freeman |
| Composer: | Lorne Balfe |
| Runtime: | 41–55 minutes |
| Network: | Netflix |
Life on Our Planet is an American television nature documentary series released on Netflix and produced by Amblin Television and Silverback Films. Executive-produced by Steven Spielberg and narrated by Morgan Freeman, the series focuses on the evolutionary history of complex life on Earth. Upon its release, the series received generally mixed reviews, with praise for its visual effects, cinematography, soundtrack, and scale, but criticism for its presentation, format, script and inaccuracy of prehistoric life.
Netflix first announced the series on November 1, 2022.[1] [2] [3] Silverback Films and Amblin Television serve as the series' production companies.[3] Steven Spielberg is listed as executive producer on the series.[4] Morgan Freeman serves as the series' narrator.[2]
A teaser for the series was released on YouTube by Netflix on August 22, 2023,[4] while the official trailer was released on September 26.[5] The series consists of eight episodes and was released on October 25, 2023.[6] The series includes a hybrid of both computer-generated imagery (CGI) and live footage videography.[4] A tie-in book written by was published by Witness Books.[7]
Each episode focuses on a specific few geologic periods, including the geologic and ecological changes that occurred during them (largely visualized with live-action footage as proxies, with some rendered imagery) and the prehistoric life that lived during those periods, which are visualized in photorealistic CGI akin to the Walking With... series and Prehistoric Planet. Each episode also features modern taxa that can trace their ancestry back to the geologic time periods shown, with several live-action segments akin to traditional nature documentaries, showing footage of some of the unique modern adaptations that some of these taxa have evolved.
The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported a 50% approval rating with an average rating of 4.7/10, based on 6 reviews.[8] On Metacritic, the series has a weighted average score of 57 out of 100, based on 4 reviews, indicating "mixed or average".[9]
Jack Seale of The Guardian praised the series' cinematography and visual effects with some exceptions, noting that "footage of animals that are real (...) and sequences conjured from scratch on a computer are nearly indistinguishable". However, criticism was given for the script and Freeman's narration, which he described as hyperbolic and treating "billions of animals in the same broad biological grouping as if they were an army or a sports team enjoying success together", ultimately describing the series as "empty spectacle".[10] Biologists Tim Rock and Matthew Wills of The Conversation gave a more positive review, praising the series for its ambition and referring to it as "hugely entertaining", although it was accused of occasionally adopting adaptationism for its narrative.[11]