Walking with Beasts

Walking with Beasts

2001
Walking with Beasts
Walking with Beasts

Walking with Beasts

8.3 | TV-14 | en | Animation

Walking With Prehistoric Beasts explores how life on earth first began. Using real footage, the series goes inside the body of our monster ancestors. For the first time, morphing technology is used to reveal how our ancestors evolved.

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Seasons & Episodes

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EP6  Mammoth Journey
Dec. 20,2001
Mammoth Journey

The Ice Age has arrived, putting life in the freezer. It is at this time when great herds of Woolly Mammoths live on the plains of what will eventually be the North Sea. As winter arrives, the Mammoth herds head south, moving to greener pastures. It is not an easy journey, especially for the young. Predators are everywhere, and the most dangerous of all are two species of humans that share the Ice Age environments of the mammoths.

EP5  Sabre Tooth
Dec. 13,2001
Sabre Tooth

South America is a land time forgot, with giant birds, the last of a trunked, hoofed herbivore, huge sloths, and giant armadillos. But the isolation of this continent has ended; and land bridge now connects South America with North America. With it has come a new species of predator; Smilodon, the infamous saber-toothed ""tiger"". But life here is no easier for the largest of all cats, especially for Half Tooth, a large male Smilodon. Having been usurped by two other males for breeding rights with a clan of females, Half Tooth struggles to survive on his own, a daunting prospect that claims many a lone male's life. But fate has a different agenda in store for Half Tooth.

EP4  Next of Kin
Dec. 06,2001
Next of Kin

The Pliocene has arrived, and the world is taking on its familiar shape. In the Great Rift Valley of Africa, the animals are taking familiar forms, though some exotic forms are wondering around with animals modern man would be familiar with. It is here that a new species of ape has evolved, one that will one day evolve into the most powerful animal ever seen.

EP3  Land of Giants
Nov. 29,2001
Land of Giants

It is now the Oligocene period, and the massive change in climate claimed 1 in every 5 species. The great tropical forests and plains that dominated the Eocene have shrunk, hanging on in the equatorial regions. In Mongolia, a seasonal desert now dominates the land, populated with some of the largest beasts ever to roam its landscape since the days of the dinosaurs. The are Hyenadon, predators as big as modern rhinos; Entelodonts, mean spirited pigs just as big; and largest of all, the massive Indricotheres, a species of rhino that was the biggest land mammal ever!

EP2  Whale Killer
Nov. 22,2001
Whale Killer

The late Eocene is a time of great change, but not a pleasant one for Earth's life form. Antarctica has separated from the other continents and is slowly freezing, changing the ocean currents. This is playing havoc with the climate, creating environmental disasters worldwide. Into this world has evolved the most fearsome whale ever to live; Basilosaurus. With ocean food stocks in chaos, a female Basilosaurus must search her home in the Tethys Sea from north to south, to satisfy her enormous hunger. And she is also pregnant...

EP1  New Dawn
Nov. 15,2001
New Dawn

15 million years after the end of the Age of Dinosaurs, Earth has recovered from the massive meteor impact. Rainforests dominated the early Eocene, and the planet has a warm, tropical climate. It is this age that the mammals begin to thrive and spread, taking over niches left vacant by the death of the dinosaurs. But it is the birds that dominate this period in Earth's history, and they are almost all killers. But in the water, the first evidence of the mammal's destiny has appeared!

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8.3 | TV-14 | en | Animation , Documentary | More Info
Released: 2001-11-15 | Released Producted By: BBC , Country: United Kingdom Budget: 0 Revenue: 0 Official Website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00tbkjh
Synopsis

Walking With Prehistoric Beasts explores how life on earth first began. Using real footage, the series goes inside the body of our monster ancestors. For the first time, morphing technology is used to reveal how our ancestors evolved.

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The tv show is currently not available onine

Cast

Kenneth Branagh , Stockard Channing

Director

Nigel Paterson

Producted By

BBC ,

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Trailers

Reviews

Christian Baer (Gullytrotter) The idea of "Walking with Beasts" was to close part of the gap between the end of "Walking with Dinosaurs" (ending in the late Cretaceous) and today.The story begins in the early Eocene (~55 million years ago). Why the Paleozoic (the 10 million years between the Cretaceous and the Eocene) have been left out I don't know. This was also a quite exciting time in Earth's history, just after the fall of the dinosaurs.The series give a nice overlook of the animals that lived during the specified time. These are just short windows however, sometimes just single days within an epoch, which doesn't give much insight into the development of animals.The amount of speculation in this series seems to be even greater than in "Walking with Dinosaurs". While we still don't know if the animals of the Eocene were single-coloured, or had spots or stars or stripes, most animals in this series had very distinct markings on their fur or feathers. But this goes even further with information about social behavior among early primates and tales of gases trapped within the local pond. These things all MIGHT have been, but watching the series gives you the impression that someone went back in time to study these animals (for a few years).There are a few animals that have left us not only bones, but also fur and dung, like the mammoth, some sabre toothed cats and the giant ground sloth (megatherium). These creatures were recreated wonderfully.This is another edutainment documentation from the BBC where the emphasis was put a little to much on the entertainment side. Just the same, it's not really bad (just not as good as "Life on Earth" was for example), a lot of fun to watch and it also contains a nice insight into the world of mammals.
Steve Riley This series is truly awe-inspiring, besides being entertaining and educational to boot. The CGI graphics are so good that the creatures look completely real. And to the nay-sayer below who complains that `no human ever saw these creatures … blah blah … how do we know … blah blah … its like saying Thomas The Tank Engine is the real story of the British railway … blah blah' I say this: First if all, palaeontologists can tell a whole lot from fossils – everything from an animal's size and gait, right down to what it ate. Secondly, some of these animals (mammoths, sabre-tooth cats, woolly rhinos, giant elks) WERE seen by human eyes, and indeed cave paintings have proved to be another valuable source of information about these creatures. And thirdly, some of these creatures are so closely related to modern animals that it is possible to draw fairly sensible conclusions about what their social habits must have been like just by observing their modern relatives. Of course there's inevitably going to be an element of conjecture and speculation in a production like this, but at least it is educated, sensible and logical conjecture, and it's probably not far off the truth in most cases. My minor quibbles are pretty much the same as those already aired by other reviewers: I found it incredibly naff giving the sabre-tooth cats names - `Half Tooth' and `The Brothers'. Why not just call them Brian, Clive and Trevor instead? That would have been no more or no less silly. And some fascinating and truly bizarre prehistoric animals were completely overlooked or mentioned just briefly (the ancient horses being one example). But these are minor quibbles about an otherwise superb effort by the BBC. It gets 9 out of 10 from me.
Roy Webber I think WALKING WITH PREHISTORIC BEASTS is well-conceived on the whole, though some of the dramatic elements are a bit too contrived to be totally effective ( however, there are a few surprises now and then ). The biggest problem here is a feeling of "deja vu", simply because the structure mirrors the WALKING WITH DINOSAURS series, and the altogether too self-conscience gags; there is one instance per episode where the camera is played to by some action ( mud, broken lens etc. ), and the slow-motion / freeze-frame shots are hokey as well. While the fur / feather textures and animal reconstructions in CGI are quite well done, the faces of the saber-toothed cats in particular look something less than realistic. All in all, the BBC series is a worthy follow-up to DINOSAURS but slightly less. I would rate it a middle "A", compared to an "A+" for the preceding program.
Jonah Falcon Tim Haines made a real misstep in this sequel to Walking With Dinosaurs, in that he made the doc too much of a story, and not enough of a documentary. The smilodon segment, especially, seemed contrived, with the two "brothers" and a lone warrior smilodon named "Half-Tooth." They also take too many great pains to have the animals reacting to the camera. On the other hand, the evolution of man is nicely done - and I strong recommend the Discovery Channel documentary Neanderthal as a companion piece.Speaking of Discovery, once again they make a hash of the documentary, editing out the rougher scenes, and intercutting the Making Of... into it as well. Stockard Channing sounds robotic as the narrator as well. I strongly suggest getting the DVD, which retains all the BBC UK stuff intact.