As David Attenborough approaches his 100th birthday, BBC Earth revisits one of television’s most extraordinary achievements with Making Life On Earth: Attenborough’s Greatest Adventure. The hour-long documentary pulls back the curtain on the groundbreaking 1979 series that transformed wildlife filmmaking forever.
Featuring candid interviews with David and members of the original crew, it retraces perilous shoots across locations like the Comoros, Rwanda and Iraq at a time when global travel — and colour television itself — still felt thrillingly unpredictable. Watched by more than 500 million people worldwide, Life on Earth cemented David’s status as the defining voice of natural history storytelling. Ahead of the premiere, we spoke with director-producer Victoria Bobin about revisiting its remarkable legacy...
100 years of David Attenborough and 50 years of his legacy with BBC Earth. How did the whole project come to fruition?
I think we were aware that the 50th anniversary of Life on Earth was coming up and when you work in wildlife filmmaking — since I work for the BBC Natural History Unit — we are very, very aware of the influence and impact of that series. It was absolutely pioneering. It was truly groundbreaking in terms of what they filmed, the stories they told and the technology they used. We felt it would be a great way to celebrate this, especially when we also realised it was approaching David’s 100th birthday. It felt like a really important series to celebrate, and it seemed like the right time to do so. We were also very aware that, for David, it was a very significant series in his life. He had been working for the BBC in a very senior management role for 10 years or so. He made a very specific choice to leave that management role and make Life on Earth, because what he was desperate to do was return to his true love of making wildlife films. So, for him, it is definitely a significant moment in his life. I think we were also aware that he has spoken of Life on Earth as being the project of which he is most proud. For all those reasons, we felt it was a very fitting way to celebrate his 100th birthday by telling the story of this very significant and important series.
How did you choose what would make it into the one-hour-long documentary?
The series was 13 episodes long, with each episode running for an hour, so that is 13 hours in total. Now, of course, we had to make a documentary that was only one hour long, so that was actually a real challenge. When I sat down and watched through it, I kept thinking, “How can I ever decide?” There are so many incredible moments. Even though the series was filmed 50 years ago, I think it still feels fresh and relevant in terms of its storytelling of the natural world. It is still as important and powerful today as it was 50 years ago, so that was definitely a challenge. We chose some of the key sequences from Life on Earth and I think even people today are aware of some of them. For example, the mountain gorillas sequence is probably one of the most famous moments in wildlife filmmaking history, when David went to Rwanda to film them. There is also the sequence in the Galápagos with the giant tortoises and another when he went to the Grand Canyon to tell the story of evolution there. There were definitely key moments. Another example is the lion hunt, because it was the first example of a full co-operative lion hunt ever filmed. There were certainly particular sequences that we felt represented Life on Earth as a whole and illustrated its story in the best way. It was also done in collaboration with David. We spoke to him about our plans for the documentary, the sequences we wanted to use and discussed them with him in detail. It was definitely a collaboration between our team and David.
Finally, of course, what else can we expect from you soon?
Well, currently, I am actually very lucky to be working on another programme celebrating his 100th birthday, which is a concert at the Royal Albert Hall in London. It will be a live concert on May 8, which is his actual birthday. There will be performances by the BBC Concert Orchestra featuring music connected to his incredible career, archival footage packages, guest speakers and lots more!