I started as a biologist at university and
and I thought i was going to be a
biologist. It didn't quite work out that
way, I ended up in broadcasting and
for a decade or so I made films in the
tropics about, initially about how London
Zoo collected animals. And then I became
a television executive and was given the
responsibility of looking after a new
channel called BBC 2. And the editorial
aim of BBC 2 was that it wouldn't be
like any other channel. 'Good evening this
is BBC 2'. And one of the things that we
developed in order to stick to that
brief was to take a really important
subject and give it proper treatment. And
a 13-part series. 13 parts because it's
actually the quarter of the year and we
be planned in quarters in those days,
they don't anymore. And the first one of
those, which people were a bit suspicious
about when I first put it out was
Civilisation with Kenneth Clarke. And to
everybody's surprise, but I'm happy
to say not mine, it was a wow. I mean people were hugely, they
delighted to make an appointment on
whatever day it was of the week and look
at it for 13 weeks. And that was so
successful we then, I then commissioned
another one on the development of
science with a man called Jacob Bronowski
And it was clear to me as a television
executive that the story to tell of
course was actually the one about the development
of life. And I eventually decided that I
wanted to do that. I didn't want anybody
else to do that. My worry was
that somebody else would do it if they
came up with the idea to me as a
television executive and say we've got
this great idea, what about telling the
story of life on earth in 13 parts - I'd
have to say yes! I couldn't turn
it down. But nobody did and I managed to
retire or resign from from BBC staff in
order to do that series and I had the
time of my life. To see all the
wonderful things, all the animals, the
species that you knew and to have a good
excuse for being sent to New Zealand or
the heart of the Congo or wherever it
was that I wanted to look at. And I just saw
all these fabulous things and I had
three of the most wonderful years of my life.
We planned it to go around the world but
we had to go around the world twice
because of seasons. And so you
did one route around the world then
another one and then little twiddly bits
in between. But it was a most marvellous
time. I suppose
the highlight that I'm never allowed to
forget and I never wished to forget
either was meeting the gorillas,
mountain gorillas with Dian Fossey. 
Certainly nothing I've ever filmed
before or since has been shown quite so
frequently as that. And it was, for
me, almost a life-changing moment
really. 'There is more meaning and
mutual understanding in exchanging a glance with a gorilla
than any other animal I know.
They're so similar.
T heir sight, their hearing, their sense of smell are so similar to ours that
we see the world in the same way as they do.
But the credit
for it of course doesn't belong to me.
I mean it belongs to Dian Fossey because had she not habituated those
gorillas we would have never got
anywhere near them. But it's one
of the most memorable episodes in my
life.
The marvellous thing is that there
are always new things for you but also
they're new things for science. I mean we
are still discovering those things and
in the depths of the ocean where
I've been to subsequently because 40
years ago we didn't have the
submersibles that we have now. But I can
write about it now and I can add bits
and details into the new addition which
I hope will
refresh the experience and the
writing because one has gone on, as years
combine, looking and seeing; and been
given these remarkable insights.
Looking back at it I can't
believe I have been as lucky. I mean who
could possibly believe that they would
spend 40 years going around looking at all
the most wonderful things that life has
to offer and show on this planet. I can't
imagine a greater privilege.
The problem is you mustn't
tell the story as though these animals
were trying to do this, they are, but each
animal represents, each species
represents a moment in the history of
the development of life. So that you can
build it up into a chapter. And so the
chapters have a logic to them which
anyone can see when you start with
animals that a little more than blobs,
like jellyfish and then that becomes
more complex. As it becomes more complex
you develop a backbone which you need
in order to structure things, to put
on the various... put on the mouth, to put
on limbs. Then looking at the
development of backbone animals, but from
those... fish, the fish then slowly move up
onto land by turning their fins
into limbs and their skin is
still wet and they still breathe to some degree through the skin, but they move up onto land.
That's one chapter. From fish to
land walking and then the wet
skin becomes dry and they
develop
a shell around their eggs and
that's a reptile. Reptile moves onto
the dry places. The reptiles
then have a huge development of which
the most dramatic of course is the
dinosaurs but they're also at the same
time, and this is an episode that we know
more about now than we did when I
first made the series, they developed
feathers. Feathers which weren't
initially, we now know, in order to fly, to
enable them to fly, they were feathers to
keep themselves warm.
And once they started keeping
warm there was another group which did
it in another way, instead of having
feathers they had fur. They became the
mammals. Those that had feathers
eventually led to the birds then once we
get to mammals
I allow myself the freedom to look at
the mammals in perhaps more detail than
we do in the other groups and that
ends with simple mammals like
shrews and so on, small little things
that scrabble around on the
ground and catching insects. And it ends
of course with primates, with monkeys and
apes and then ourselves.
And so when you see yourself as playing
a part in that long fantastic panorama
of life, three and half thousand million years long,
it's very satisfying as far as I'm concerned, that you
were a part of this. That you're a
character in this story, it's the greatest story.
