Dynasties: Episode #1.1
November 17, 2018 3:28 AM - Season 1, Episode 1 - Subscribe

Documentary following endangered species fighting for their survival. David, a chimpanzee in Senegal, tries to overcome threats to his leadership and ensure an heir.
posted by ellieBOA (3 comments total)
 
Was this any good? I ask because the tentpole BBC docos are - to me - getting emptier and emptier each passing year; just hollow spectacle now with about as much info in them as a postcard. This looks like it's even more anthropomorphic than usual.

I've been (re)watching The Living Planet recently on Blu-Ray (the transfer is quite good! Get it!), and aside from the novelty of seeing a young(ish) David strolling around in some truly epic flares, it really really highlighted to me how bad the newer documentaries are. Living Planet has soooooooooooo much information in it. It's bracingly didactic, you actually need to concentrate, and there's always a broader thesis he's illustrating.

So many of the sequences are things that the BBC crew have been going back to film like every bloody year since it was released. It's crazy to realise you're watching the first filmed cheetah hunt etc when they are so standard now. Even more shocking is how many interesting and unusual animals show up in The Living Planet, and have never reappeared again. But we still see fucking lions, penguins, killer whales, Mara crossings, in every BBC documentary now.

It made me dislike Planet Earth 2 even more by comparison, and I'm worried this will do the same. Is it just narrative, or is it actually informative?
posted by smoke at 6:10 PM on November 18, 2018


It always amazes me how similar we are to chimpanzees, not just in our DNA but in our behavior too... for example, their names are STRIKINGLY similar to our own. Heck, I knew a human named David once!
posted by some loser at 7:28 PM on November 18, 2018 [1 favorite]


My wife and I started watching this the other night, but we didn't finish it. I think we both got a little bored. To me, it all felt a little contrived, full of false peril and slick editing. I wanted Dynasties to be more about the history of a notable family, not feel like an episode of a reality TV show.

Maybe I just don't like Chimps enough.
posted by krisjohn at 12:37 AM on November 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


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