A David Attenborough BBC Nature Miniseries
Madagascar is a documentary that originally aired as three one-hour programs on the BBC in February 2011. In the US, an abridged version was broadcast in May 2011 on Animal Planet as a single two-hour special. But the DVD discs contain the full-up UK version, and the value of the package is considerably enhanced by the inclusion of two excellent bonus features that run a total of 98 minutes.
Madagascar was originally part of the Gondwana supercontinent, but in remote geologic time it separated from Africa and India, turning into an island. From roughly 60 million years ago, plants and animals evolved on that island in isolation, resulting in astonishing biodiversity. Today Madagascar is home to five percent of the world's plant and animal species, 80 percent of which are found nowhere else.
In Madagascar, David Attenborough examines this thousand-mile-long island that has a variety of ecoregions, ranging from rainforests to desert. The miniseries consists of three programs, each of which contains about 49 minutes of nature shots followed by about 10 minutes on the techniques used to film a particular subject.
Dozens of species of lemurs — arboreal primates with dog-like faces and (typically) long tails — live in Madagascar, and there are shots of a few of them. Crowned lemurs are seen bounding across jagged limestone pinnacles, and tiny mouse lemurs — the smallest primates in the world — are shown. Among other unusual creatures are the tenrec—a hedgehog-like animal — and the fossa — cat-like in some ways, but actually closer to a giant mongoose.Bonus Materials
The two-disc DVD set contains a pair of outstanding bonus BBC nature documentaries, each of which is highly entertaining and informative.
The 39-minute "Lemurs of Madagascar" (2006) features Charlotte Uhlenbroek following ring-tailed lemurs for two weeks. They live in a female-dominated, hierarchical society. Uhlenbroek also has some great shots of white lemurs called silky sifakas hopping around on the ground, and their movements are so peculiar they look like they're dancing.
The 59-minute "Attenborough and the Giant Egg" (2011) is about how in 1961 Attenborough was handed egg fragments in Madagascar and 50 years later he returns to the island to ruminate on the extinct elephant bird that laid the egg. There's some amusing archival footage of a skinny young Attenborough doing a TV show titled Zoo Quest and some interesting information about the elephant bird, which was flightless and believed to be 10 or 12 feet tall and weigh perhaps a thousand pounds. At the end of the documentary, Attenborough offers his educated guess at what made the elephant bird go extinct.
Release Date: June 7, 2011
Total Runtime: 2 hours 56 minutes
MPAA Rating: Not Rated