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Third in the series (if we’re talking about this franchise in actual chronological order and not production), Walking with Beasts is a good, but never truly great affair. Its problems are pretty easy to spot, Walking with Dinosaurs had created the basic pattern of how these episodes would play out and Beasts practically shoots out carbon copies of these forms with different beasts being the only major point. There’s an episode dedicated to large plains animals, aquatic life, aviary creatures and so on.
And it isn’t just that these broad themes reoccur in a similar pattern from the previous series, it’s that the narratives attached to them also repeat with very little to make them truly original. But even when the narratives aren’t as enthralling as they were the first time around, the special effects typically save any episode from falling into less-than-good viewing. The lone notable exception might just be “Next of Kin,” an episode detailing the dawn of humankind and the animation on these early humanoid creatures is too rubbery or cartoonish to be successful or believable enough, and that’s factoring in the curve for a television budget. Another problem is that Beasts succumbs to the post-Matrix age of deciding that strange bullet-time or random slow-motion effects was necessary to tell this story. These moments are highly distracting and feel like a group of adults trying to cobble together an educational series with a desire to factor in “what the kids like these days.” It’s a glaring jump from realistic animal documentary style footage to this highly theatrical effects work that calls needless attention to itself.
No matter, the ambition and scope of this series might surpass that of Dinosaurs for the sheer fact that these creatures boast a striking resemblance to ones that walk around in present day. Making credible mammoths, sabre-tooth cats, giant birds or enormous sharks move with authenticity and appear close-but-not-quite like the modern day equivalents is a hard prospect. Episodes like “Sabre-tooth,” “Mammoth Journey” or “Whale Killer” are the best of this particular group without a doubt for this reason alone. Like the rest of the series it takes a “best guess” approach, utilizing all of the (then) current information to come up plausible scenarios and crafting educational AND entertaining content in the process. It’s inferior to Dinosaurs, mostly for cosmetic reasons, but still a great piece of television.
