The Living Planet - A Portrait of the Earth

Rating:
Summary: Excellent, but get version 2 DVD
Review: The program is EXCELLENT, and I've watched it many times on VHS. Unfortunately, the region 1 DVD has been edited and I was very disapointed to find that most of the sections had been shortened. From what I understand, the region 2 DVD is not edited. So if I had it to do over, I would buy the region 2 DVD from amazon.co.uk instead.

Rating:
Summary: Somewhat disappointing, but still great
Review: This series was originally aired on PBS in the mid 1980s and was groundbreaking. It set a new standard for nature documentary. I was excited to see it released on DVD.

Given the apparent age and material of the source for the transfer (it looks to me like the DVD was made from a videotaped copy of the original film stock, and the video tape probably sat in a storage room somewhere for 15+ years), I think one needs to make allowances for a diminished sound and picture quality, but I really wonder who thought it was a good idea to change the order of episodes. The way Sir David originally wrote and performed the voice-overs for the ends of each episode was as a tie-in to the next, so that there would be a sort of cliff-hanger, but also a continuity to the whole series. Some idiot at Time/Life must have thought he/she knew better than Sir Attenborough how the shows should be ordered, so they cut those parts out. The result is very abrupt and startling endings to the shows--sometimes in mid-sentence! Why? This makes no sense at all.

I hope that someone comes to their senses and these classic shows get re-released without the stupid edits, and with the shows in their proper order.