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Beverly Hills, Calif. • Sir David Attenborough has worked in television for more than half a century, but he can barely contain his enthusiasm for his latest project, which goes back a lot further than that.
About 600 million years further. "First Life" looks at the origins of life on Earth.
Attenborough's enthusiasm for the project is obvious. And contagious, in person and in the program. As is the 84-year-old's enthusiasm for the natural world in general.
"When you see a hummingbird for the first time, you are knocked out," Attenborough said. "It's extraordinary. But when you see it for the second time, you are beginning to understand more about the way a hummingbird works. And as you go through and see it year after year, you learn more. It's neverending.
"If I got to the situation where I said, 'Oh, it is a hummingbird, ha, yet again,' I would pack it in. The knockout quality that you get from the natural world is infinite and never ending."
He sees "First Life" as a follow-up — or, perhaps, a prequel — to his series "Life on Earth," which debuted in 1979. That was "the history of life, but it started with very complex creatures. It started with things with multiple legs and with feelers and so on. And they couldn't possibly be the first animals ever existed."
At the time, that was as far back as the fossil record went.
"In the last 20 years, and particularly in the last 10, we have suddenly had a whole enormous avalanche of discoveries and information which enable us to trace life back to the very, very tiniest beginnings of the first complex living molecule. And that's what ['First Life' is] about," Attenborough said. "It is a thrill to be able to slot that piece of the narrative into the picture so that it now forms a continuous story from those ancient times beyond our comprehension to today."
"First Life" is visually spectacular. Not only does Attenborough travel the world to show us a variety of present-day creatures, but the documentary employs amazing computer-generated images to bring to life creatures that have been extinct for eons.
What producers were trying to do was bring back a world that Attenborough had never seen. "That was a big challenge, and we had to bring in the top special effects expert from all over the world to work with us," said producer Anthony Geffen. "Top scientists to bring these animals one by one back to life."
And Attenborough marvels at how far technology has come since he produced his first wildlife documentary back in 1954.
"Computer graphics have now reached a degree of perfection that I can look at an animal on the [Great] Barrier Reef, let's say a mantis shrimp, and another animal which has come from computer graphics," he said. "Unless I knew what the mantis shrimp was, I couldn't tell you which was the living animal and which was a computer graphic image which had been generated from that fossil.
"It pleases me to no end to think that I started with a primitive black-and-white camera and ending up with what I suppose is a final refinement of the visual image," he said. "What can follow that, I don't know. Maybe the smells, but we haven't gotten there yet."
'First Life with David Attenborough'
The two-hour documentary airs Sunday, Oct. 24, at 9 p.m. and midnight on the Discovery Channel.