Attenborough’s dinosaur doc will enrapture children
If you don’t have a dinosaur-loving child with whom to watch Prehistoric Planet (Apple TV+), may I suggest you borrow one? They are the target market, and they will love it. You may be a jaded old person who thinks, “Isn’t this just like Walking with Dinosaurs or Jurassic Park without Jeff Goldblum?” but several minutes in, my six-year-old turned to me in wonder and asked: “Is this real?”
And that is not really a silly question, because Prehistoric Planet is a stunning feat of CGI. The dinosaurs look as real as any animal you see in a wildlife documentary. This is the point. The show takes the template of BBC natural history series such as Planet Earth and replaces lions and meerkats and whales and what-have-you with dinosaurs. It is presented by David Attenborough and made by the BBC’S Natural History Unit, but of course the BBC could not afford a show like this – Apple have clearly thrown a huge amount of money in its direction.
The show is Pg-rated but there is nothing here to scare even the nerviest child. There is no gore, even when a tyrannosaurus rex gets stuck into lunch. Episode one opens with T. rex, as the most famous dinosaur of all, but cleverly chooses an approach you don’t expect: T. rex swimming through the sea, doing a spot of daddy daycare with his offspring in tow.
The programme-makers know how to hook young viewers. Who knew dinos were so cute? The first episode features lots of baby dinosaurs. In the manner of all wildlife programmes, you know one of these little fellas is going to be picked off by a predator. This is all signposted by Hans Zimmer’s typically emotive, Hollywood blockbuster score.
And, as with standard natural history series, it works best when there is scale and spectacle: the cameras panning across an immense colony of pterosaurs on a clifftop, or a group of titanosaurs lumbering towards the camera. Dear old Attenborough puts just as much effort into narrating scenes about coral or plant life but I’m afraid they can’t really compete.
As an adult whose dinosaur knowledge is pretty much limited to the Big Five – T. rex, triceratops, diplodocus, brontosaurus and stegosaurus – this series introduced me to creatures of which I’d never heard. At times it was unclear if some of what we were seeing was conjecture – the exact way in which pterosaurs dived seawards to escape predators, for example. But never mind that. Channel your inner six-year-old and enjoy.
As someone who attended one educational establishment where the teachers wore gowns and were addressed as “Sir”, and another where staff were known to whip out a ruler to measure skirt lengths, the first visit to my children’s school came as something of a shock. As the headteacher showed us around the playground, two kids pelted past. “All right, Mark,” they shouted cheerily. Mark? Mark?! My old headmistress would be turning in her grave.
Yet the children revere Mark, and all of the other staff members with whom they are on first-name terms, and the school (in one of London’s poorest boroughs) is rated outstanding. This is all to say that there are different ways of getting the best out of pupils, and another of those was on show in Britain’s Strictest Headmistress (ITV).
The programme was a profile of Katharine Birbalsingh and her work at the Michaela Community School in north-west London. Birbalsingh has become, in the words of one government adviser, a “pincushion” for the Left after she gave a blistering speech at the 2010 Conservative Party conference criticising Labour’s education policies.
Critics have likened her school to North Korea. You could describe her methods as tough love. Some of the rules made sense, such as no talking in the corridors – it leaves no room for bullying, making the children feel safe. Others seemed more draconian, such as the girl who received a detention because she came to school with only one pencil, rather than two.
Yet the pupils who were interviewed approved of the discipline and boundaries, and all came across as polite, assured young people. On the evidence presented here, from exam results to the sense of pride instilled in the pupils, the school is a success.
But something was off. It looked and felt like a glossy promotional film – for the Michaela ethos in general, and Birbalsingh in particular – rather than an even-handed documentary. A line in the credits noted that it was made “in association with Sharon Brittan” – bankrolled, in other words. No further information was supplied, but the programme would have seemed a good deal more honest if it had declared an interest: Ms Brittan is a director of the Michaela Community Schools Trust.
Prehistoric Planet ★★★★★
Britain’s Strictest Headmistress ★★★★