Late beasts breathe again

The programme has been lavished with technology

By the BBC's Michael Osborn.

What made the natural world tick after the death of the dinosaurs is a tricky one for us modern humans to get our heads around.

It was a place where man-sized birds ate forest-dwelling horses of feline proportions, while the whale's ancestor behaved more like a toothy alligator.

And so was our introduction to the wildlife that roamed the Earth after the dinosaurs had been blitzed by a meteor. These were the forerunners of some of the creatures we know and love today.

The BBC's Walking With Beasts is a follow-on from the highly-acclaimed Walking With Dinosaurs. And this time around more fur and feathers are flying about the place.

Some scenes are quite scary

Computer graphics and automated models have been used to recreate a long-gone era in full living technicolour - and again, the results are quite stunning on screen.

But it takes quite a leap of faith to fully believe that this is how the world turned aeons before Man came along to take charge of the planet, though what you see is palpable enough - not to mention scary.

The opening episode covered 24 hours in the life of a corner of German primeval forest. Birds literally ruled the roost there, with gawky six-feet tall feathered foes heading the barbarous food chain.

The birds were the dinosaurs' legacy, and instead of pecking away at budgie seed, they much preferred a nice hearty bit of horse.

Some of the best sequences were the most graphic - with the outsized bird's fledgling breaking free from its protective shell, only to be gored to death by some bloated, flesh-hungry ants.

Is this how creatures really were?

And the whales' ancestor - a sort of fat crocodile - snapped at a lesser mammal in a sequence blood-curdling enough to make you leap out of your chair.

Like its dinosaur forerunner, this programme has been lavished with technology to make it stand alone.

But the sore fact remains that it is all make-believe and rather like a virtual wildlife programme without the real blood, sweat and smells.

That aside, it is marvellously produced and the effects are second-to-none, though I prefer the models who look more realistic than their animated counterparts, with their minute detail, even down to the gunk in the corner of their eyes.

Kenneth Branagh's narration is clear and dramatic but only serves as another reminder that it is not real, and at the end of the day, we do not really know if that is how our planet was in prehistoric times.

Walking With Beasts continues on BBC One on 22 November at 2000 GMT.