The secret world of sound with David Attenborough is a nature docuseries that uses enhanced audio to show how animals navigate and survive in their environment. As Attenborough says in the show’s introduction, there are sounds that various species make and hear that humans can’t hear, and this series aims to bring some of those sounds to our attention for the first time.
THE SECRET WORLD OF SOUND WITH DAVID ATTENBOROUGH: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening shot: Views of perse habitats. “The natural world is full of sounds,” says presenter David Attenborough. “But until now we’ve only heard part of them.”
The essence: The first episode revolves around predators and prey. From three brothers in a lion pride who roar to warn others that they are wandering into their territory, to a garden where tawny-tailed bumblebees vibrate their wings to generate the buzzing sound needed to dislodge pollen from a flower.
Bottlenose dolphins’ clicks alert eels and small fish to flee, but dolphins use those clicks to find fish and other prey under the sand. The great grey owl has to compensate for the noise that snow deflects from prey when tunnelling. Kangaroo mice stamp their feet to scare away predators and rivals for food. Elephants sense the roar of a storm 100 miles away through their paws. Earthworms hear the pitter-patter of rain coming to the surface, but seagulls use their feet to mimic that sound to find food.
What shows will it remind you of? Blue Planet, A Life On Our Planet, Planet Earth or any of the dozens of nature documentaries Attenborough has presented.
Our opinion: The secret world of sound with David Attenborough Not only does it use enhanced audio to give viewers the ability to hear sounds we’ve never heard before from the animal kingdom, but director Rebecca Hart and the show’s various cinematographers do a great job of getting vibrant footage of those animals using and responding to those sounds.
We’ve seen plenty of these methods in other shows, but it’s interesting that here, those methods take a backseat to sound. Night vision cameras capture the same pride of lions we saw at the beginning of the episode chasing wildebeest, feasting on a warthog, and fighting hyenas over a carcass. Macro photography shows us bees and earthworms in their environments, as well as tracking the kangaroo mouse at night. Underwater cameras show us how bottlenose dolphins hunt using sound and echolocation.
The idea that all of these methods are just a means to an end in this series makes it all the more interesting to watch. The producers aren’t trying to show off their visual wizardry here; the images are there to enhance the show’s real reason for being, which is all those fascinating sounds. And those sounds are truly interesting, especially in cases where predators mimic the sounds their prey use as cues to come out of hiding.
Attenborough, 98, is more willing than ever to lean into his narration, even appearing on camera for parts of the first episode. There’s a reason he seems to have become the default voice for nature documentaries: he speaks about what we see with a zeal and air of experience that few other narrators have.
Sex and skin: None. The only thing that might make the show not suitable for the whole family is that there are some “cycle of life” images where predators are seen killing and devouring their prey.
Parting shot: A sneak peek of the second episode, which examines how animals use sound to ward off competition and attract a mate.
Sleeping Star: Praise must go to the sound engineers who used the technology to record the enhanced audio.
Pilot’s most typical phrase: None that we can find.
Our calling: PASS IT ON. The secret world of sound with David Attenborough Combines stunning visuals with never-before-heard audio to paint a more complete picture of what animals use to navigate their environments.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting, and technology, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV addict. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.comFast Company and elsewhere.
