The Green Planet: Tropical Worlds

Twenty-six years after The Private Life of Plants, the BBC and Sir David Attenborough have finally produced another TV series about the plants that shape our world.

The first episode of The Green Planet will air on BBC One and iPlayer this Sunday, 9th January 2022, at 7 pm.

Over the course of five hour-long episodes, we’ll see Sir David travel across the world, from Croatia to northern Europe and from the USA to Costa Rica, from deserts to water worlds, tropical forests and the frozen north. We’ll meet the largest living things that have ever existed, trees that care for each other, plants that hunt animals and the plant with the most vicious defences in the world.

The Green Planet will be the first immersive portrayal of an unseen, interconnected world. Using pioneering motion-control robotics systems, the series takes us on a magical journey into the world of plants, in real-time and in time-lapse, allowing us to watch their lives on their timescale and from their perspective. Thermal cameras and macro frame-stacking give incredible depth of field, while ultra-high-speed cameras and the latest developments in microscopy reveal a fresh view of the lives of plants and their incredible beauty.

Like us, plants don’t exist in isolation. They forge intimate relationships, as friends and enemies, with other plants, animals and even with us. They count, they hunt, they deceive, they communicate, they protect their relatives and they manipulate animals for their own ends – things we previously thought of as ‘animal behaviour’. When plants and animals interact, the plant is usually in charge.

Episode one delves into Tropical Worlds. More kinds of plants are crammed together in the tropical forests than anywhere else on earth. The