Walking with Dinosaurs, review: less natural history, more Jackanory
We live in a world where it's increasingly tricky to tell fact from fiction so it's perhaps no surprise that the producers of Walking With Dinosaurs (BBC One) felt at liberty to spin out some fanciful Game of Thrones -style storylines to flesh out their prehistoric tales. When you've amassed an impressive animated army of awe-inducing creatures you probably feel you can get away with anything.
Only you really can't. Not so much science fiction as science fantasy, this (very) belated sequel to the original series from 1999, when the then state-of-the art dinosaur animations were all anyone cared about, treads light on facts in favour of a peculiarly sentimentalised anthropomorphic approach in which we're invited to empathise with a toddler Triceratops, a single dad Spinosaurus, a lovelorn Lusititan (like a Brontosaurus on steroids) and so on. It should really be called Soapasaurus.
So while the up-to-the minute visuals are hugely impressive, immersing you in a world it's hard to imagine as extraordinary creatures wander vast landscapes, giving us visions of our unpolluted planet before humans were let loose on it, the stories woven around them, straight from the Disney playbook, feel suspiciously manipulative.
Based on the guesswork of palaeontologists – every so often you cut away to a bunch of dino buffs scraping away at bones on some far-flung rock and exchanging, 'Wow, awesome!' platitudes – each jeopardy-filled episode centres on a cutely named character (Rose, George, Albie, take your pick of nursery dino-names) and invites us to follow them until their inevitable, usually neck-cracking, demise.
Which would be fine if the programme properly flagged up how fantastical these tales are. But though lip service is paid to how sketchy the facts on which the stories are based, there are some giant leaps made in superimposing human emotions on dinosaur behaviour. Did dinosaurs have ritual meeting dances or experience love or grief? We're kidded here that maybe they did – and they're not around to contradict the endless theories.
Take the story of George, an adolescent Gastonia (we're dipping into the less familiar book of dinosaurs for the most part), who is presented as the kind of teenage gang lad who'd go out on the lash with his mates. If this armour-plated George had jeans on he'd be dropping them at half mast and calling everyone 'bro'. This might work for Pixar, but presented as actual science it just feels unnecessarily dumbed down.
Bertie Carvel, accompanied by surging orchestral strings on the background which never let up, gives it the full Jackanorysaurus on the voiceover, draining every last drop of drama from lines such as, 'Time to get the babies to safety' or, 'Having come so far, losing one of his babies is a huge blow'. Over six episodes the incessant jeopardy – narrow escape/narrow escape/death – feels exhausting.
There's the bones of a fine series here and dedicated dino-heads will revel in the strikingly-created creatures. But leave the twist and turning cliffhangers to EastEnders and let the science speak for itself.
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