Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Life In Color With David Attenborough’ On Netflix, An Exploration Of How Wildlife Communicates Using Colors

Life In Color With David Attenborough is a 3-part docuseries where Attenborough describes how the animal kingdom not only communicate and survive through the use of color, but how some species see color in a way that humans can’t. With new camera technologies, some of which were developed for the series, we get a look at how certain animals see colors in different ways, either via ultraviolet filters or through a polarizing filter.

LIFE IN COLOR WITH DAVID ATTENBOROUGH: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: David Attenborough walks along a tropical beach, then spies something through binoculars. “The natural world is full of colors,” he says in voice over.

The Gist: The first episode spans locations from Australia to Costa Rica to South America to the Southeastern U.S. Attenborough explains that the first species that appeared on this planet hundreds of millions of years ago didn’t have a great ability to see color, which is why ancestors of those species tend to be black, white, brown or some combination of the three. But ones that have evolved to be particularly sensitive of color not only use it to feed but also mate and keep others away.

Some of the species the series’ various nature photographers capture are ones that use color in ways we’ve seen before, like the peacock strutting his stuff in order to find a mate. Male mandrills gain color on their noses and their rear ends when they mature into adults in order to warn off lower members of their troupe to not invade their territory. Flamingos gain their pink color from the food they eat, and a female who has had to care for a newly-hatched child over the past year turns white again because she has to use the extra food for her hatchling. A male Costa’s hummingbird in the Southwest U.S. desert are dull at first glance, but are brightly colored when the sun hits their feathers just right; they use it to find a mate.

Some of the species the episode shows using other methods of seeing colors include the blue moon butterfly in Australia; not only does the butterfly see hidden markings on flowers we only see through an ultraviolet filter, but the markings on the male’s wings only come alive to other butterflies’ ultraviolet vision. Fiddler crabs that live in mud flats in Australia see polarized light, in order to see other crabs in contrast to their environment.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? We could say that this reminds us of the countless Attenborough-hosted nature docuseries he’s done for the BBC and Netflix, but the way this content is parsed out reminds us of some more technologically-forward nature series like Netflix’s Tiny Creatures or Apple’s Earth At Night In Color.

Our Take: Like most of the nature specials produced by the BBC, many of which Attenborough hosts, Life In Color is rife with spectacular photography, whether it’s in macro — like an overhead view of flamingoes’ mating ritual — or in micro, like scenes of butterflies mating. The colors presented really pop, and they seem to be a good test of whether your TV is up to snuff or needs some recalibration (it seems that our 13-year-old Vizio is doing just fine in that regard).

Attenborough is his usual enthusiastic but professorial self, expressing the wonder he’s seeing though the tone of his voice. Where Life In Colour shines to us is the technology used to capture what some species see that we can’t with our naked eyes. He explains some of the technology that is being used, like a two-camera setup with a UV filter that filters out everything but UV to one camera while simultaneously reflecting visible light to the other. But the technology isn’t explained all that much in the first episode, especially the one that shows the polarized view that the fiddler crab sees.

The third episode, though, should go about explaining how the nature photographers set up these new rigs, and that makes gearheads like us happy.

Sex and Skin: There’s some mating scenes, but most of the “action” is still off-camera.

Parting Shot: Scenes of tiny, brightly-colored frogs. “To them, life is color,” says Attenborough.

Sleeper Star: As always, it’s the photographers that whose credits flash by at the end of the episode. They’re putting in dozens of hours of time to meticulously scout locations, observe, wait, and shoot. All for a few minutes of footage. It’s not a job we’d ever have the patience to do.

Most Pilot-y Line: None.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Life In Color With David Attenborough is informative and visually stunning, of course, but the technology behind some of its more interesting scenes is what makes us want to keep watching.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

Stream Life In Color With David Attenborough On Netflix