Image: Wikimedia Commons.
Home » Attenborough’s at it (again)!

Attenborough’s at it (again)!

Image: Wikimedia Commons.
Image: Wikimedia Commons.

Finally, news of a new TV series written and presented by the world’s most famous natural history broadcaster and UK National Treasure, Sir David Attenborough. Sadly, it’s on a pay-per-view Sky Atlantic digital channel (No. 107) – in glorious HD (that’s High Definition) – and on Sky 217 in 3-D. But whilst it’s not exactly free, it is about plants. In the appropriately entitled ‘Kingdom of Plants’, Sir David ‘explores the fascinating world of plants, from the most bizarre to the most beautiful… using today’s latest technology to reveal a whole new dimension in the lives of plants… and discover a hidden world that only too often we overlook’, and in which ‘we move from our timescale to theirs’. Hmmm… sounds a lot like his previous 1995 six-programme terrestrial BBC TV series, ‘The private life of plants’? Yes, but here’s the twist – this new three-part series was rather intriguingly filmed only over a year on location at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew (UK – and in other controlled environments…), using a variety of 3-D filming techniques and computer enhanced imagery, much of which would not have been around in the dark days of the late 20th Century. Hmmm… I’m not so sure about the ‘electrophototrickery’, but if this new series helps to keep spreading the message that plants are important (and really rather interesting…), good luck to it/him! [For a review, visit The Guardian – Ed.]

Nigel Chaffey

I am a Botanist and former Senior Lecturer in Botany at Bath Spa University (Bath, near Bristol, UK). As News Editor for the Annals of Botany I contributed the monthly Plant Cuttings column to that august international phytological organ for almost 10 years. I am now a freelance plant science communicator and Visiting Research Fellow at Bath Spa University. I also continue to share my Cuttingsesque items - and appraisals of books with a plant focus - with a plant-curious audience at Botany One. In that guise my main goal is to inform (hopefully, in an educational, and entertaining way) others about plants and plant-people interactions, and thereby improve humankind's botanical literacy. I'm happy to be contacted to discuss potential writing - or talking - projects and opportunities.
[ORCID: 0000-0002-4231-9082]

1 comment

Read this in your language

The Week in Botany

On Monday mornings we send out a newsletter of the links that have been catching the attention of our readers on Twitter and beyond. You can sign up to receive it below.

@BotanyOne on Mastodon

Loading Mastodon feed...

Audio


Archive