It may not be possible to have watched enough nature documentaries to know you find them boring without having seen at least a few produced, narrated, or hosted by David Attenborough. That’s because the English media personality has been making these kinds of documentaries for so long — starting with Zoo Quest in 1954 — that he’s practically become synonymous with the genre. His iconic voice is so warm and soothing, and his name so trusted, that crypto scammers have tried to use his likeness to trick people online, knowing that marks are more likely to buy whatever they’re selling if they pretend that Attenborough is involved.
Still, if you somehow find nature documentaries boring but haven’t come across any of David Attenborough’s, you’re about to have your mind changed.
Life in Colour (2021)
Dazzle the senses
A lot of David Attenborough’s documentaries have themes; one will look exclusively at birds, another at animals that live in mountainous regions, another at endangered species, and so on. This three-episode limited series on Netflix is all about how animals use color to mate, fight, hide, and more. Not only is it a fairly undemanding introduction to Attenborough’s work, it’s stunning to look at. It’s about color, after all, and the specialized cameras the crew uses show off a variety of animals in all their vivid splendor.
- Release Date
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2021 – 2021-00-00
- Network
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BBC One
- Directors
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Adam Geiger, Sally Thomson, Nick Green
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David Attenborough
Self – Presenter
The Blue Planet (2001)
Under the sea
Land animals are fascinating, but the oceans of the world are home to some of the strangest, most upsetting-looking animals to ever draw life, and as far as I’m concerned, no one but David Attenborough is qualified to give me a tour.
Attenborough’s documentaries are known for capturing remarkable sights on camera, with all credit to the remarkable crew who develop and use the technology capable of recording these amazing sequences. In The Blue Planet, we see a whale carcass that falls to the bottom of the ocean and nurtures a whole ecosystem. And in the most memorable scene, a pack of orca whales hunt a young grey whale for hours to eat only its lower jaw and tongue. Nature is spectacular, nature is brutal.
Other memorable images include hundreds of hammerhead sharks swarming around a seamount, and cuttlefish showing off its frills as part of a courtship ritual. A sequel to this series, Blue Planet II, came out in 2017 and may be even better than the original, but why not just watch them all?
- Release Date
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2001 – 2001-00-00
- Network
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BBC One
- Directors
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Alastair Fothergill
Cast
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David Attenborough
Self – Narrator (voice)
Prehistoric Planet (2022)
David does dinosaurs
While David Attenborough started his career with the BBC, everyone wants a piece of him in his latter days. Life in Color was made for Netflix, and Prehistoric Planet airs on Apple TV+. If you want to make a nature documentary, accept no substitutes.
The idea behind Prehistoric Planet is simple: take the basic template of a normal David Attenborough nature documentary and apply it to dinosaurs. Obviously the crew can’t capture any actual footage, but highly trained CGI artists bring the prehistoric world to life in stunning detail. Sometimes, it’s so convincing you won’t know the difference.
Prehistoric Planet ran for three seasons. For the third, David Attenborough was replaced as narrator by Tom Hiddleston, so it’s no wonder the show concluded there.
- Release Date
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2022 – 2025-00-00
- Network
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Apple TV+
- Directors
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Adam Valdez
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David Attenborough
Self – Presenter
David Attenborough: A Life On Our Planet (2020)
Then and Now
David Attenborough isn’t just a narrator; in many of his documentaries, he’s a star, or at least a spokesperson. People got to know him over the decades, and some of his documentaries make canny use of his public image.
David Attenborough: A Life On Our Planet, another Netflix joint, is one of those. Attenborough visits areas he explored earlier in his career and sees how they’ve changed, and some of the contrasts are stark; there are places that should be full of life that aren’t, often because of things mankind has done over the years to denude them.
This movie also underscores Attenborough’s abiding interest in conservationism, environmental advocacy, and sounding the alarm about climate change, something he also does in terrific series like 2011’s Frozen Planet.
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The Green Planet (2022)
Plants: They’ll get you
Attenborough;s interests in ecology were very wide-ranging. Animals weren’t the only thing that fascinated him. In series like The Green Planet, the crew turns their state-of-the-art cameras on the plants of the world, making them feel alive in a way that’s frankly a little unsettling. Advanced time lapse photography lets us see flowers, sprouts, and fungi move and grow and morph in a way that makes them feel like they have minds and wills of their own, rather than just being the green stuff we absentmindedly walk over every day.
This documentary makes you look at plant life in a new way, which is humbling, interesting, and maybe even a little scary. The best nature documentaries will do that to you.
- Release Date
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2022 – 2022-00-00
- Network
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BBC One
- Directors
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Elisabeth Oakham
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David Attenborough
Self – Narrator (voice)
Life on Earth (1979)
David Attenborough comes into his own
In this ambitious documentary series, Attenborough travels the globe trying to trace the evolution of life on the planet Earth. It took three years to make, documents more than 500 species, and marks the series that turned Attenborough from a familiar presenter into a household name.
The moment that did it comes in the penultimate episode, when Attenborough encounters a group of mountain gorillas in Rwanda. While he’s talking about their evolution, the gorillas cozy up to him, sit on him, and start to groom him. It’s the kind of remarkable footage you’ll routinely come across in Attenborough’s body of work.
Planet Earth (2006)
Still the best
David Attenborough documentaries are at their best when they’re ambitious. Planet Earth aims to do no less than chronicle all life on Earth, with different episodes set in jungles, the great plains, caves, icy tundras, and more. One-upping Life on Earth, Planet Earth took five years to film and visited 64 countries. The diversity of life on display is remarkable.
This series is packed with memorable sequences caught on film in high definition for the first time. A hungry polar bears fights a walrus, a great white shark beaches itself to attack a seal, an elusive snow leopard hunts mountain goats over precarious, snow-covered cliffs, and on and on. It feels like things we shouldn’t be watching, and yet here we are.
Arguably, 2016’s Planet Earth II may be even better, but again, there’s no reason not to just enjoy them both.
- Release Date
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2006 – 2006-00-00
- Network
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BBC One
- Writers
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Gary Parker, David Attenborough
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David Attenborough
Self – Narrator
This barely scratches the surface
As mentioned, David Attenborough has been making nature documentaries for over 70 years, so this sampling doesn’t even begin to cover a sliver of a section of how much he’s contributed. There are lots of great nature documentaries out there, but few with his indefinable charm. Watch an Attenborough documentary is often an uplifting experience.
And at 100 years old, Attenborough is still working. He’s narrated multiple documentaries in 2026 so far, including Secret Garden and Blue Planet III, so it’s not inconceivable that his best work is ahead of him.
