I remember that Sam Neill one - IIRC correctly it was hugely patronising, with lines like 'this is the Earth - it's where we live. It's our planet - The Earth'.

Yep, Palin's good, I've got the set of DVDs he did traveling around and they're entertaining and thought provoking. He seems to meet heads of state and dignitaries on the weight of working for the BBC, and that's juxtaposed with the ordinary people he just happens upon on the street.

The Himalaya one he did was ace

Brian Greene and Michio Kaku are good presenters too, they've both done physics documentaries and can hold an audience. I've got a few of their books and they can make it all seem understandable to your average bod interested in it-but-didn't-really-get-into-it-at-school-enough, like me.

I did lose it with Calabi-Yau space though.  :-S

"Sam Neill should do more documentaries"

He was fantastic in Event Horizon!

I'm not sure what point he was trying to get across there, it must have slipped by me, but he said it with such soothing authority!

I remember the beginning of a Carl Sagan doc which started with the baking of an apple pie. then, after the credits, Sagan looked at the camera and said, with a totally straight face, "the universe is like an apple pie".

At that point I was gone...

To the pie store?

Probably the pub, or at least another channel, TBH

Apple pie is mighty good.

That would be iPie.

And if it causes another unwanted and unremovable Apple app to be added to my iPhone I will be mightily unhappy.

I quite like the primate-related ones presented by Charlotte Uhlenbroek, but she seems to have vanished from the screens.

Perhaps no one could pronounce her name.

It's almost a pity that Keith Harris is dead, really.

Personally, I like to get all my spacey related news from Richard Hoagland. He's always good for a laugh.

Also, Alice Roberts has done a couple of goodies (and Coast here and there) for the OU...and she's purdy.

I like him. Finally got around to watching Rise of the Planet of the Apes with him in.

Oohh yeah, I like her too. Seen a few things she has done.

Quite like him on the radio (infinite monkey cage) where I can't see his shiny, smug face.

Not the BC I meant but yes, I do like IMC. He does come across as a tit sometimes though, but I also enjoy his spacey documentaries.

It nice when you find something that is not only educational, but well done and entertaining as well. Not all companies put in the effort they should.

Like for the nature ones, we don't really care for the ones where they've got someone talking another language as you're watching them speak, and you either have to read it, or they have voice overs that don't match up.

Some of the ones with the voice overs put me in mind of the old Kung Fu Theater they had on when I was a kid. The guys mouth would stop moving, but you could still here the voice over going on and on, or their lips were going at breakneck speed, and you just got something like "Hi".

I want to see what the documentary is about, and not who thinks they should be on camera all the time. I don't mind a few shots of someone explaining something in depth, but you don't need a visual person throughout something like a nature documentary. People want to see the animals and where they live. It's why we watch them. :)

The BBC really gets some beautiful shots of some wonderful places. :)

There are some good ones out there, and I think the industry should concentrate on working with them.

We tried to watch one on oceans a while ago, and it had this guy on it with voice overs for him. They spent more time on him, then on the oceans and what lives in them. The whole thing was very poorly done.

I grew up watching Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom and Jacques Cousteau. They were my all time favorite shows as a kid. We never missed an episode of them at my grandparents. Everyone in the house loved them. They'd come on and the whole family was in the livingroom for the whole time. :)

I'm not a big fan of the doom scenario stuff myself. If it's something going to actually happen in my lifetime, maybe. It's not like we could actually do anything about it. If and when it happens, it happens. I'd rather hear about things like our jungles, forests, mountains, oceans, etc. You know?

We watch a lot of the space documentary ones as well. We really like the ones that talk about creations and how they happened. We also like the ones that talk about the possibility of one day going out there and making a proper exploration of other planets. Both in and out of our system. There is just so much out there we'll never get to experience. We don't live long enough, and our technology hasn't caught up to our imaginations for such projects. Not really.

Have you ever seen Gorillas in the Mist? The movie they did about Dian Fossey and the mountain gorillas of Africa. I love that movie. It's one of my favorites. I love the shots of the gorillas.

We watch a  lot of the primate ones as well. We just watched one the other day about snub nosed monkeys. They're adorable!

I like monkeys. :)