Natural World Articles from SEXGRINDER.COM Free Article Directory

Search our Site:

Natural World (formerly The World About Us) is the longest-running nature documentary strand on British television.^[1]. Each year, between 10 and 20 individual natural history films are commissioned by the BBC from leading independent wildlife filmmakers, or produced in-house by the BBC Natural History Unit, and are usually broadcast in the spring and autumn seasons. There is often an eclectic mix of subjects, but all are characterised by high production values.

In 1967, colour television was gradually being introduced to British audiences. The then Controller of BBC Two, David Attenborough, was seeking new opportunities for expanding the range of colour programmes on the fledging channel, and as many of the films by the BBC's Travel and Exploration Unit had been shot in colour, they provided ideal material. He commissioned The World About Us, a strand of high-quality, 50 minute documentary films to fill a regular slot in the Sunday evening schedule (a format which has been retained to the present day). The first episode went out on Sunday, 10 December 1967.^[2] Originally, production duties were shared between the Travel and Exploration Unit in London and the Natural History Unit in Bristol, but over time the London contribution dried up and the focus became exclusively on natural history.^[3] To reflect this, the series title was altered to The Natural World in 1983 and then shortened to its current form in 2003.

Within the Natural World strand there have been occasional miniseries on particular themes. Notable examples include the three-part series The Flight of the Condor (1982), Kingdom of the Ice Bear (1985) (both released on VHS), and Wild Indonesia (1999).

David Attenborough has contributed narration to around 45 episodes of Natural World and The World About Us between 1969 and 2008, the most recent being "Superfish" (2008-05-14). He also narrated the Echo of the Elephants trilogy (1993, 1996 and 2005)^[4] in which Cynthia Moss and cameraman Martyn Colbeck charted the life of an African elephant herd in Kenya's Amboseli National Park over the course of fifteen years.

Natural World Subcategories Natural World Articles