Stunning! This series offers a sweeping panorama of the African continent. However, the stories presented here are often intimate, following individual animals through both ordinary and special events in their lives. Many of the animal behaviors this series captures are firsts in wildlife filmmaking. Even the series narrator, David Attenborough, who boasts a lifetime of wildlife observation, is surprised by these unexpected dramas.
The cinematography is top-notch, and I really enjoyed following the cameramen and women behind the scenes to see how they labored to catch some of their amazing shots. The filming spanned four years, with some sequences taking over a year to complete.
To be honest, one of the things that I appreciated most about the series was the absence of humans. You really feel like you are there, witnessing nature in the raw. Only the last episode deals with human involvement, which unfortunately brought the bad news of rapidly disappearing habitats and species. But there were bright spots too, about repopulation and preservation efforts.
It can be easy for nature to feel far away, but Africa brings you back.