As a teenager, I was fascinated by dinosaurs and had a keen interest in paleontology into my thirties. At one point I nearly went to university to study Geology. I say this to show that I'm not some completely uneducated heathen before passing judgement on this documentary.
Even David Attenborough cannot save this over long and dull CGI-fest. If the content had been packed into a one-hour special it might have been interesting, but there were just too many repeats of 'he needs to discover...." between mundane CGI shots of dinosaurs behaving in a friendly manner towards each other to create a sense of either interest or excitement.
The lead paleontologist, whilst he might be a great and dedicated scientist (and let's face it, you need to be great and dedicated to spend 10 years of your life digging in the dirt in North Dakota) unfortunately had all the charisma of Stan Laurel. Chiselling out bits of brown earth whilst exclaiming how orgasmically excited he was at discovering bits of marine ammonite in a freshwater environment did not ring my bell.
I also found Mr Attenborough's repeated assertions of 'we think', 'scientists believe', 'the evidence points to' and so on extremely irritating. Yes, we know paleontologists are only guessing - we don't need telling in every other sentence.
The focus of the documentary is a site the size of football pitch called Tanis (yes, like in Raiders of the Lost Ark) in North Dakota, which, whilst interesting, is only a snapshot of the extinction of 3/4 of the species on the Earth at that time. The most interesting part of the program, the effects of the meteor strike, were largely glossed over in the last ten minutes of the film.
The turtle who was impaled on a branch should get a special mention for heroism in the face of sub-standard CGI.
The highlight of the program was undoubtedly the Diamond Particle Accelerator in Oxfordshire, UK, where they examined a squashed dinosaur egg (just in case the Americans missed anything when they looked at it).
What? Oh no. The contents of the egg were completely uninteresting. Lots of tiny bones and Mr Attenborough enthusing about it having a soft shell. The female physicist running the gadget was a stunner though....
Even David Attenborough cannot save this over long and dull CGI-fest. If the content had been packed into a one-hour special it might have been interesting, but there were just too many repeats of 'he needs to discover...." between mundane CGI shots of dinosaurs behaving in a friendly manner towards each other to create a sense of either interest or excitement.
The lead paleontologist, whilst he might be a great and dedicated scientist (and let's face it, you need to be great and dedicated to spend 10 years of your life digging in the dirt in North Dakota) unfortunately had all the charisma of Stan Laurel. Chiselling out bits of brown earth whilst exclaiming how orgasmically excited he was at discovering bits of marine ammonite in a freshwater environment did not ring my bell.
I also found Mr Attenborough's repeated assertions of 'we think', 'scientists believe', 'the evidence points to' and so on extremely irritating. Yes, we know paleontologists are only guessing - we don't need telling in every other sentence.
The focus of the documentary is a site the size of football pitch called Tanis (yes, like in Raiders of the Lost Ark) in North Dakota, which, whilst interesting, is only a snapshot of the extinction of 3/4 of the species on the Earth at that time. The most interesting part of the program, the effects of the meteor strike, were largely glossed over in the last ten minutes of the film.
The turtle who was impaled on a branch should get a special mention for heroism in the face of sub-standard CGI.
The highlight of the program was undoubtedly the Diamond Particle Accelerator in Oxfordshire, UK, where they examined a squashed dinosaur egg (just in case the Americans missed anything when they looked at it).
What? Oh no. The contents of the egg were completely uninteresting. Lots of tiny bones and Mr Attenborough enthusing about it having a soft shell. The female physicist running the gadget was a stunner though....