Netflix had never made a nature documentary before 2019. Then it made one of the best.
Our Planet, narrated by David Attenborough, arrived on the service on 5 April 2019 — all episodes at once. It runs two seasons and 12 episodes, with the second, Our Planet II, landing on 14 June 2023. The first season is the one that matters, and it earns its 8.8.
Trailer, via Netflix.
Attenborough and the Silverback Team
The series comes from Silverback Films, led by Alastair Fothergill and Keith Scholey. That pair made Planet Earth, Frozen Planet and The Blue Planet for the BBC. Here they worked with the conservation charity World Wildlife Fund.
Attenborough narrates. Steven Price composed the soundtrack. That is a serious crew, and the show knows it.
What separates Our Planet from the BBC work is the pitch. The series covers the wildlife and natural wonders of eight different ecosystems, but it keeps returning to humans’ impact on the environment. Climate change is not a footnote here. It is the spine.
Eight Ecosystems, One Argument
Traditional nature documentaries ask you to marvel. Our Planet asks you to marvel and then watch the ice go.
The scope is the sell, and the show delivers it. Eight ecosystems, each with its own set of creatures and its own set of pressures. The camera work is what you would expect from this team. The argument is what you would not.
This is the first nature documentary Netflix ever made, and the company put real weight behind it.
- 25 million households were expected to watch in the first month, per Netflix.
- 100 million households had watched as of March 2021.
- A behind-the-scenes documentary followed on 2 August 2019.
Those numbers say less about quality than about reach. Netflix used Our Planet to prove it could play in a genre the BBC had owned for decades. It could.
Where It Ranks Against the BBC Canon
Set Our Planet against Planet Earth and the difference is intent, not craft. Fothergill and Scholey built the same machine twice. The second time, they pointed it at a problem.
- The Blue Planet — the ocean, wonder first.
- Planet Earth — the land, spectacle first.
- Frozen Planet — the poles, cold and clean.
- Our Planet — eight ecosystems, consequence first.
That ordering is the point. Our Planet is the one in the lineage that refuses to let you look away.
The risk is preachiness. The show mostly avoids it by trusting the footage. When the narration turns to climate change, it states the case and moves on. Attenborough’s voice does the rest. He has spent a career selling wonder, and here he spends it on a warning.
What Holds It Back
Two seasons is thin for a project this size. The first season carries the weight; Our Planet II arrives four years later and feels like an addition rather than a continuation. A viewer who starts with season two is starting in the middle of an argument that was made better the first time.
The eight-ecosystem structure also spreads the show thin. Some segments land harder than others. That is the cost of ambition at this scale.
None of it sinks the thing.
Our Planet matters because of timing. Netflix needed a prestige nature title, and the planet needed a mass-audience case for acting on climate change. The show served both.
It is not the most beautiful nature documentary ever made — in this paper’s view, the BBC canon still sets that bar — but it is the one that treats its audience as adults who can handle bad news.
The 100 million households figure is the real story. That many people watched a documentary about climate change on a streaming service, in the first years of the format’s dominance. Whether the genre has matched that reach since is an open question, but it has been chasing it.
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