Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #739 in DVD
• Released on: 2008-02-25
• Rating: Exempt
• Aspect ratio: 1.77:1
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 2
• Running time: 250 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Billed as the last in David Attenborough’s series of Life nature documentaries, Life In Cold Blood leaves you dearly hoping that proves not to be the case. For once more, as he has done many times in his distinguished career, Attenborough gently - and unobtrusively - delivers an utterly fascinating insight into the world in which we live.

The focus of Life In Cold Blood is on reptiles and amphibians, bringing into focus a series of creatures very much of all shapes and sizes. Across the episodes that make up the series - all of which are contained in this DVD set - the programme makers delve into the lives and mannerisms of its subjects. They do so with some quite stunning camera work, bringing to our screens things that have quite simply never been seen before.

As much as perhaps we shouldn’t take for granted the heights that Attenborough’s work easily scales, Life In Cold Blood happily matches the standards of his earlier series. Often genuinely jaw-dropping, and never less than completely absorbing, the DVD set is rounded off with some equally intriguing extra features that delve into the complex production of the programme itself.

If Life In Cold Blood really does bring the Life series to an end, then it’s even more reason to cherish it. Even without such emotive reasons, this is nonetheless an extraordinary series, that’ll make you look at snakes, frogs, crocodiles and turtles in very different ways. Unmissable. --Simon Brew

DVD Description
Reptiles and amphibians ruled the world for nearly 200 million years and today there are still over 12,500 of them. Some are huge, the deadliest creatures on earth. Some are tiny, among the strangest to be found anywhere. Together, they not only outnumber mammals or birds but in their colourful variety and extraordinary behaviour, they far surpass them.

So where did these ancient creatures come from? How have they transformed themselves into the bizarre and beautiful forms that are alive today? And what's the secret of their epic success?

In Life in Cold Blood, David Attenborough traces the story of their evolution and overturns the myth that these creatures are just primitive killers, to reveal them for what they truly are.

Synopsis
LIFE IN COLD BLOOD is the last of David Attenborough's critically-acclaimed LIFE series and focuses on the amphibians and reptiles that have inhabited the Earth for millions of years.

Customer Reviews

Reptiles come alive on another excellent BBC DVD
Life in Cold Blood is another sterling wildlife series from the BBC, presented with warmth and authority by veteran naturalist David Attenborough. This DVD set contains all the core episodes plus a variety of additional, behind-the-scenes material, to run to over five hours. The photography is beautiful and the reptilian subject matter is intricately examined and explained for al to understand. It's an excellent teaching tool while at the same time providing colourful entertainment for anyone with a vague interest in natural history.

Using new filming techniques help to keep what can be a bit of a staid subject more interesting. Tricky animation shows how cold-blooded reptiles move heat around their bodies to stay warm, or demonstrates what goes on inside a giant python when it's just eaten an entire deer. (In fact, the footage of the snake swallowing the deer is some of the most extraordinary natural history filming I've ever seen).
LICB also uses ground-breaking filming to illustrate what's going on underneath the skin - and the heat cameras brilliantly demonstrate how a sea iguana changes temperature throughout its daily routine. The occasional animation of the odd dinosaur is a welcome bit of fluff, too (after all, T-Rex is much more camera-friendly than a snake which spends three days out of four being dormant!)

The Cold-Blooded Truth explains how reptiles function differently to warm-blooded mammals; how they use the warmth of the sun to function and how bigger reptiles can store heat and so be active even at night. The Amphibians episode looks at the creatures which first made the transition from the oceans to dry land, and how their descendents (mainly frogs) need now to balance their needs to stay moist with their need to be warm. The Lizards programme looks in depth at reptiles which live in dry, desert conditions while the Snakes episode uses CCTV to show how clever rattlesnakes are when hunting, and Attenborough `enjoys' the experience of being spattered with venom from a spitting cobra. The final programme mixes the most interesting of the reptiles - the ferocious saltwater crocodiles - and some of the most mundane (turtles and tortoises just don't do it for me!)

Of course, LICB does has its flaws although they are fairly minor compared to the accomplishment of the overall series. Some times it's a little bit too pleased with how clever it all is, and like many of these series it does tend to repeat stand-out shots and general information from one episode to the next. So if you watch them all in close succession you will notice some repetition.
It also suffers from the usual natural history problem: while there is a fair bit of startling new footage here, there's also new film of the same-old same-old. I watch quite a few documentaries and probably never need to see the leatherback turtles laying their eggs again. Really. There are some aspects of a subject which get repeated every time the programme-makers go near the subject - and surely David A must be fed up with the turtles, too?

Apart from my (personal) over-exposure to some of the themes, this is an excellent series and a good value DVD set. It tackles what can be a very `worthy but dull' subject and manages to translate more than 90% of it into colourful and interesting TV. It falls somewhere between four and five stars: 9/10

The wonders of cold blooded species
For some reason I enjoyed this series far more the second time around. As is usual with more recent BBC wildlife series, the actual camera work is visually stunning. Shots are posed for effect and I spent most of the time wishing for a bigger screen than my poor old CRT telly.

As most of the stars of the film are slower moving than the usual subjects of current wildlife documentaries, it was a pleasure to see David Attenborough daring to handle snakes, frogs and lizards, annoy nesting alligators and don a specially coated visor to demonstrate how a cheesed off snake spat venom. It will be very sad if this is his last series- either due to age -or worse the threatened BBC cutbacks.

There aren't any extra features over and above the originally broadcast 5 episodes. As has become standard, the last 10 minutes is devoted to a "making of" documentary which provided fascinating information on the research teams whose day in day out dedication to studying the subjects allowed the BBC to go in with a tick list of must have shots.

My most memorable moments were:
The golden waving frogs of Panama- now sadly only in captive breeding.

The bejewelled elegance and variety of Madagascan chameleons.

Pythons swallowing deer and antelopes- having to push the end of their windpipe out while they carefully and slowly swallow their dinner.

The deep vocalisations of alligators causing water to dance like fountains on their backs.

The jealous mating frenzy of male loggerhead turtles- as they tried to split a couple up by nipping the successful male's fins in an underwater scrum.

David with Lonesome George- the sole survivor of a subspecies of Giant Galapagos Tortoise and his thoughts on the need for active conservation.

Unlike the other reviewers I have no faults to find with this series. It's a beautiful tribute to the fascinating variety of this planet and is a totally must see series.

Very interesting but not as good as planet earth
It took many hours of research to produce this new BBC series about reptiles and amphibians.

The aim was to probe that this animals are not boring or charmless.The series has some FANTASTIC shots in particular the shots of the golden frog in panama are highly interesting and achieves the aim of making the animals look very intelligent.

However the series can become repetitive and borrows shots from Planet earth ( flat lizards ) and most of the shots have been done before or in previous series ( blue planet ).

Altogether this DVD will be of interest to the followers of Attenborough but is not as ground breaking as Planet earth.

More please