I saw you blogging about the bad documentary and it got me wondering, are there any wildlife/reptile documentaries that you could genuinely recommend?
YES.
Life in Cold Blood is amazing. There’s five episodes and they’re all really great. My favorite is Dragons of the Dry, but really, just watch all of them. They’re gorgeously shot and beautifully researched. This is the only one I’ve listed that’s not entirely on youtube- it might still be on Netflix. I actually bought the series on blu ray a while back because it’s that pretty.
The Nova documentary Lizard Kings is also fantastic. It focuses on monitor lizards.
NATURE has a series called The Reptiles. There’s at least three episodes- Snakes, Lizards, and Turtles and Tortoises. I don’t know if there’s one for crocodilians.
The Dragons of the Canaries is a really neat look at lacertids in the Canary Islands. They’re not a group you hear about much, and many of them are threatened or endangered today- largely due to feral cats and habitat destruction. There’s also this amazing scene where an actor pretending to be a 19th century herpetologist falls down a hill.
Last Feast of the Crocodiles is an older documentary about a drought and the receding waters of the Limpopo River in 1991. But even though it’s from the 90s (I vividly remember watching it over and over as a wee bairn), it’s still well worth a watch- especially given how rapidly climate change is progressing.
