Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #12771 in DVD
• Released on: 2003-03-31
• Rating: Exempt
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 120 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Breaking the mould of previous "Walking with" offerings, the BBC's Walking with Cavemen sees Professor Robert Winston follow in the footsteps of ancient man in a series that traces the history of humanity from bipedal ape-men (Australopithecus Aphaeresis) to the awakening of the human mind's potential with Homo Erectus. Spread over four fascinating half-hour instalments, Wilson presents an accessible and populist, but still suitably anthropological study on how apes became human and the traits that we inherited from our earliest ancestors.

Unlike Dinosaurs and Beasts, Cavemen combines CGI with actors to portray the characters in the story of man. Initially this seems to make it far less technically impressive than the earlier programmes--memories of Kubrick's 2001 are inevitable--but fortunately the acting is superb and the viewer soon forgets that these are people in monkey suits. The series also makes use of a special effect called "deep time-lapse", which shows in a matter of dramatic seconds the thousands of years of geological changes that sped up our ancestors' evolution. Wilson himself takes part in the action as if he is a modern-day naturalist following lions across the Serengeti rather than creatures long extinct. This approach makes for a more immediate as well as poignant interpretation of history: the result is an enlightening and moving tribute to the human journey.

On the DVD: Walking with Cavemen on disc has production interviews with series producer Peter Georgi, executive producer and director Richard Dale, director of animated extras Ben Palmer and actor David Rubin. There are also location interviews, the best of which is two of the actors in full costume explaining the difficulties involved in eating lunch. There are sequences explaining the creation of the digital effects, and the original score can be accessed as an audio-only option. A fact file for each episode and a picture gallery complete the extras package. --Kristen Bowditch

DVD Description
Episodes:
First Ancestors
Blood Brothers
Savage Family
The Survivors

Special Features
On Location
Production Interviews
Storyboard to Animatics to Film
Animatics
Storyboards
Original Score
Fact Files
Photo Gallery
Credit Sequence
Subtitles: English

Customer Reviews

Disappointing and more theatrical than informative
The BBC's third instalment in the "Walking with -" range is, I’m afraid to say, the most disappointing yet. I don't say that because of its reliance on actors - I think that they do a competent if not quite good job (despite some of the suits being less than convincing). Neither do I say that because the narrator is present in the action: I just feel that the script is poor and too often light weight.

Too much each episode is spent in a series of dramatic visual and audio build-ups to the next momentous point about our ancestors relationship to us: this style of dramatised revelation gets very repetitive and grates quite quickly. This does lessen in the last two episodes, but, too me it looks it comes off looking like padding, or worse, an attempt to beguile the watcher with effects rather than informing them.

Again, in the earlier episodes I feel that the narrator, Robert Winston, is spending too much time addressing the camera rather than trying to convey information. Having an unseen narrator had the advantage that he could just read from a script (a.k.a. Branagh in Walking with Dinosaurs and Beasts).

I would say that the series doesn’t hit its stride until the third episode, but by then we’re dealing with Homo Ergaster and our ancestors are looking much like us by this point. I believe that pre-Ergaster, the series does not do a good or terribly enlightening job.

In summary though, this series is too short, too light weight and falls a long way short of what it could have been. The series only captures a small fraction of the grandeur that is human history, and I don’t believe gives it due weight. I can’t really recommend that you buy this title unless, like me, you have a deep fascination with human prehistory, but even then, I suspect you’re likely to be disappointed. The BBC has allowed too much of the content potential of this series to be unrealised, and I never once during this series thought “wow, that was well done.”

Walking with Robert Winston
Despite the title, the cavemen merely play a supporting role to Robert Winston and his moustache. This series departs from the usual 'Walikng with...' format by having an on-screen presenter. This would be tolerable if it wasn't for the fact that the production team have introduced the absurd conceit that Robert Winston is actually travelling back in time, courtesy of a customised Land Rover. With a turn of the ignition key, Winston's watch spins rapidly, clouds rush across the sky and mountains rise and fall, rather like 'The Time Machine' meets 'Back to the Future'.

The four episodes feature Winston first in a safari jacket climbing up a tree to get a better view of the apemen, then in a dune buggy chasing a nomadic tribe, this is followed by a sequence in which he chases Neanderthal men in a snowmobile and ends with a completely superfluous hot air balloon journey. Winston also gets up close to the pre-humans, David Attenborough style. This is ridiculous enough, but the most implausible aspect is asking us to believe that they wouldn't flee in terror at the sight of Winston's luxuriant moustache!

Apart from the silly time travel stuff, this is up to the usual high production values of the 'Walking with...' series and gives a fascinating account of how we evolved from apes into humans. The human actors make very convincing apemen (I only hope that they had a lot of prosthetics, for their sake) and the photography is stunning. Recommended, but with reservations.

A disgrace
Overview:

This series was an utter disgrace and devoid of almost any accurate information, and so the DVD is the same. The reviews giving this 5 stars have to be by people who had no prior knowledge of the subject matter, and this programme has 'educated' them with totally inaccurate and sensationalist theories. Robert Winston is totally out of his field in tackling the issue of human evolution, and as a result, he looks like a fool. I watched every episode of this series purely to gasp at the false theories it proposed. Aside from the terrible accuracy of the programmes, the presentation and representation of the extinct species it covers is terrible. Avoid at all costs

General review:

The DVD series covers human evolution from the Australopithecines (3 million years ago) up to anatomically modern humans. The coverage of australopithecus is poor, with the species' posture and behaviour being false or incredibly speculative. This species was relatively small and its entire behaviour practically unknown, any concept of a family unit as is seen in western europe today is surely incorrect and simply applying modern living to our view of the past. It gets worse as the DVD progresses to cover Homo habilis and Homo erectus, with them appear sometimes without genitals and looking like scruffy savages. When was the last time you saw a healthy chimp or human look as dirty or cliched as is presented in this series? Never. Their behaviour is again total speculation, false speculation at that, which has been totally discredited by modern studies. Their tool use and technology is vaguely accurate, but it portrays most of them as hunters when they in fact likely scavenged from carcasses around waterholes, initially simply smashing bones open to get marrow and much later competing for meet from the carcass. Overall, our ancestors are portrayed in a glorious way in an attempt to lead up to the 'wonder' that the programme tries to make out we are....this emotive stance totally betrays the present view of our evolution

The series also proposes reasons why humans became bipedal (walking on 2 legs like we do) which are absolutely laughable and sensationalised for the television audience. Let me asure you that humans didn't become bipedal because of 'sex' like the programme insists, with the argument that walking on 2 legs saves enough energy so our ancestors could have even more sex being absolutely false, hence why almost every other savannah animal (including primates like the baboon) is still quadrupedal. Truth is that many reasons are thought to have lead to bipedalism, with noone really knowing which were more influential. They include minimising the area expose to the sun (head and shoulders instead of entire back), to free up hands for tool use, change in foraging, for infant carrying (since we lost body hair for them to cling to)...and a few others.

So to sum up, if you buy this DVD you will be buying a work of fiction (except for the time scale and species names), with every 30 minutes of footage perhaps containing 1 or 2 points that evolutionary scientists would agree with. Believing the contents of this programme will be to have learnt things that are not true, and will be a waste of your money. David Attenborough's programmes on mammals and primates are infinitely more entertaining, accurate and worth your time