Sir David Attenborough heads to Canada in his five-part series “The Green Planet”.
The 96-year-old travels the globe in the latest BBC Earth landmark series to explore Earth’s biodiversity and the secret, fascinating life of plants, with the documentary including stops in Ontario to capture maple trees waking from hibernation and Lodgepole pines being attacked by mountain pine beetles.
A press release reads, “Using pioneering new filmmaking technology and the latest science, ‘The Green Planet’ takes viewers on an immersive journey from the deepest jungles to the harshest deserts, revealing the strange and wonderful world of plants as never seen before. Living secret, unseen lives, plants are often overlooked.
“Yet they are as aggressive, competitive and dramatic as animals — locked in life-and-death struggles for food and light, taking part in fierce battles for territory and desperately trying to reproduce and scatter their young.”
The series was filmed in 27 countries over four years and marks the first time Attenborough has returned to filming the world of plants since his 1995 series, “The Private Life of Plants”.
A synopsis continues, “Throughout his travels in the series, Sir David meets the largest living things that have ever existed, trees that care for each other, plants that hunt animals and plants that breed so fast they could cover the planet in a matter of months. He finds time travellers — seeds that can outlive civilizations and plants that remain unchanged for decades. By examining our relationship with plants past, present and future, ‘The Green Planet’ reveals how all animal life, including ours, is totally dependent on plants.”
Attenborough tells ET Canada of whether this felt like an important time to be making a new series about plants: “Yes, the world has suddenly become plant-conscious. There has been a revolution worldwide in attitudes towards the natural world in my lifetime.
“An awakening and an awareness of how important the natural world is to us all. An awareness that we would starve without plants, we wouldn’t be able to breathe without plants. The world is green, it’s an apt name [for the series], the world is green. And yet people’s understanding about plants, except in a very kind of narrow way, has not kept up with that. I think this will bring it home.
“The world depends on plants. It’s a cliche now, every breath of air we take, and every mouthful of food we eat, depends upon plants. I also think that being shut up and confined to one’s garden, if one is lucky enough to have a garden, and if not, to having plants sitting on a shelf, has changed people’s perspective. And an awareness [has grown] of another world that exists to which we hardly ever pay attention to in its own right.
“Of course, we do gardening programs and have done since the beginning of television. But this is not about gardening, this is about a parallel world, which exists alongside us, and which is the basis for our own lives, and for which we have paid scant attention over the years,” he continues.
READ MORE: Sir David Attenborough Narrates ‘The Mating Game’ Exclusive Sneak Peek Ahead Of Canadian Premiere
“The Green Planet” premieres Wednesday, July 6, at 9 p.m. ET/PT on BBC Earth in Canada.
BBC Earth is also available on Amazon Prime Video with “The Green Planet” airing simultaneously with the linear channel from July 6.
