Four years in the making, filmed over 3000 days, across every continent and in every habitat, with a production budget of £14 million ($22 million) Life is the latest wildlife blockbuster from the BBC’s award-winning Natural History Unit, the producers of Planet Earth and The Blue Planet.

Release Date: June 1, 2010 Running Time 484 minutes

Packed with excitement, revelation, entertainment, and stunning screen firsts, this breathtaking ten-part blockbuster presents 130 incredible stories from the frontiers of the natural world. Discover the glorious variety of life on Earth and the spectacular and extraordinary tactics animals and plants have developed to stay alive, individual creatures under extreme pressure to overcome challenges from adversaries and their environment, pushing the boundaries of behavior.

Life is a fascinating documentary that will catch and maintain everyone’s interests. Oprah Winfreydoes an excellent job at narrating this series, sometimes even being quite amusing – a nice change from the typical boring narration of educational videos. This is a documentary that everyone of all ages can appreciate and learn from and as if the information at hand weren’t intriguing enough, the footage is incredible! This would definitely have caught my interest if it were released and shown when I was in school.

Many of these animals have never been filmed (this way) before just living their lives. You will be surprised by just how many unique animals there are all across the world. There is no question that viewers will learn a great deal about the animal kingdom, particularly about how the animals shown survive, get their food, and mate. The first ten episodes aired on television and the eleventh episode is about the making of Life (also directed by Oprah Winfrey).

Each disc is just over 2 hours, not including the bonus features. If you are not easily engaged by animals or animal documentaries, I would suggest you not watch this documentary straight through like you would a scripted or “reality” television series. Watch this documentary in increments, so as not to wear yourself out, so that you can really appreciate everything that you see. Aside from that tip, there is nothing more to say about the documentary other than it is worth every penny on DVD.

Special Features – Each disc has about a half hour worth of behind the scenes footage with no narration, but follows those researchers and cameramen documenting the animals. It will amaze you how close those working on the project got to the animals, as one would assume most of the footage would be zoomed in for the more dangerous animals. But nope, they are only a few feet away. What a scary and yet equally exhilarating and exciting job! This footage mainly details the challenges that were faced during filming, like shooting the flying fish (which was slowed down 40 times in the finished product), and shooting the birds mating as time was running out on the job. This footage is actually much more interesting to me than the “Making Of” bonus episode and as a whole is its own “Making of” episode with no narration and more of a relaxed direction and tone. So this footage would have to be my favorite of all of the bonus features.

Primates: The Making of (10:33) – This is surprisingly not narrated by Oprah Winfrey and after listening to her voice for 11 hours, it was a nice change. Though I wasn’t particularly interested in the making of this episode, so this feature can be appreciated more if you are.

Deleted Scenes (18:09) – These deleted scenes include narration by Oprah Winfrey. The first begins with birds and ends with plants. If you need just a little bit more insight into the animals featured in the 11 episodes, this is the special feature for you!

Own Life on DVD June 1, 2010.