Man on Earth Review - Channel4 history

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Man on Earth - Tony Robinson has a cunning plan on climate change for Channel 4

I bumbled my way into watching Man on Earth when I couldn’t find anything decent on BBC iplayer one night last week and gave Channel 4’s OD a go. I hadn’t heard anything about it, but within minutes I was hooded like some kind of climate change junky.

Firstly, it’s got Tony “Baldric” Robinson as the presenter and secondly it’s one of the best constructed documentaries I’ve seen in a long time. The gist is that Tony tracks the monumental shifts in the Earth’s climate throughout the timeline of human existence and the impact of each on the development of humanity.

Starting from our earliest assent out of Africa and charting our adaptation to the Ice Age, our growth during interglacials and the impact of bad climate on our near relatives Homo neanderthalensis, Man on Earth is a proper geek fest.

However, with Robinson’s hypnotic tones and enthusiasm for all things archaeological, along with some great map cut scenes, it never gets boring. Nor is it another documentary about how we are all doomed because of our impact on the climate in recent years, important though they are. Man on Earth is just a sensible documentary on how we’ve dealt with climate change in the past.

3.9/5