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.