Planet Earth, the TV series, BBC

Planet Earth is an Emmy Award and Peabody Award-winning BBC nature documentary series narrated by David Attenborough and produced by Alastair Fothergill. It was first broadcast in the UK from 5 March 2006. The American version is narrated by Sigourney Weaver.

The series was co-produced with Discovery Channel and the NHK in association with the CBC, and was described by its makers as "the definitive look at the diversity of our planet". It was also the first of its kind to be filmed entirely in high-definition. The series was nominated for the Pioneer Audience Award for Best Programme at the 2007 BAFTA TV awards.










Broadcast details
Each programme has a running time of approximately 58 minutes. This includes Planet Earth Diaries, a 10-minute featurette that details the filming of a particular event.

The show was heavily trailed on the BBC's television and radio channels both before and during its run. All eleven installments had a 9pm Sunday screening on BBC One and in most cases were followed by an early evening repeat the next Saturday on BBC Two. Besides being BBC One's featured "One to Watch" programme of the day, its ratings were consistently high, averaging between seven and nine million viewers for each Sunday transmission.

In the UK, the series was split into two parts. Episodes 1–5 were shown 5 March–2 April 2006 with the remainder broadcast from 5 November 2006, following a further repeat run of part one on BBC Four. Part two premiered on Sundays at 9pm on both BBC One and BBC HD with a second repeat on BBC Four the following week. As a promotion for the autumn series, "Great Plains" received its first public showing at the Edinburgh International Television Festival on 26 August 2006. It was shown on a giant screen in Conference Square.

The music that was featured in the BBC trailers for the series is the track "Hoppípolla" from the album Takk... by Icelandic post-rock band Sigur Rós. Following the advertisements, interest was so widespread that the single was re-released. In Australia, however, it was replaced by "Jupiter", the fourth movement of Gustav Holst's orchestral suite The Planets. The U.S. trailer featured different theme music: "The Time Has Come" from Epic Score, composed by Gabriel Shadid and Tobias Marberger.

Along with its 2005 dramatisation of Bleak House, the BBC selected Planet Earth for its trial of high-definition broadcasts. The opening episode was its first ever scheduled programme in the format, shown 27 May 2006 on BBC HD.

On 25 March 2007, the series began its run on American television on Discovery Channel, garnering massive ratings and critical acclaim. It was the most watched show on Discovery since The Flight That Fought Back on 11 September 2005. The show was broadcast on Sundays in one 3-hour block followed by four 2-hour blocks. It was also transmitted in high definition on the then Discovery HD Theater at the same time as its SD premiere; it then followed on The Science Channel and Animal Planet. However, it was heavily edited for time, commercials as well as content. Sigourney Weaver replaced David Attenborough as the narrator.