TV review: Life, BBC1 (From Leigh Journal)

TV review: Life, BBC1

4:31pm Thursday 10th December 2009 in

• Skip social links
• Print
• Email
• Comments(2)

I have not watched every episode of the outstanding Life, but having sat enthralled through the programme about plants, wished I had put it on “series record”.

This was just brilliant television, featuring stunning time-lapse photography showing how plants will do anything to get water, food and sunlight — and all in glorious HD.

Using time-lapse photography, it showed how plants starved of sunlight in the rainforest have adapted over millions of years to climb trees, using sticky “feet” or sharp claw-like tendrils, to clutch on to the trees and literally haul themselves to the top to bask in the sunlight, flower and procreate.

Then there were the carniverous plants which set traps for unwitting insects so they could devour them for the nitrogen.

With the slow motion and high-speed camera work showing them moving, seemingly with a purpose, it was hard not to think of them as “thinking” beings and this programme should give all die-hard vegetarians food for thought.

They don’t have eyes, they don’t moo and they aren’t cute in a furry animal sense, but this programme revealed them to be very much alive and wanting to have “babies”.