David Attenborough's Shows

The following is a chronological list of television series and individual programmes where David Attenborough is credited as writer, presenter, narrator or producer. In a career spanning six decades, Attenborough's name has become synonymous with the natural history programmes produced by the BBC Natural History Unit.

1952- Coelacanth
This short film, featuring biologist Julian Huxley discussing the rediscovery of the coelacanth, is Attenborough's first television credit.

1952- Animal, Vegetable, Mineral?
A quiz show based on the game Twenty Questions, which ran until 1959, in which eminent scientists would try to guess the origin of specimens from museum and university collections.

1953- Song Hunter
Series on folk music, featuring performances by Alan Lomax

1953- The Pattern of Animals
Attenborough's first natural history series, on animal camouflage, warning signals and courtship displays, was studio-based and presented by Julian Huxley

1954- Zoo Quest
An animal-collecting expedition to Sierra Leone with London Zoo curator Jack Lester and cameraman Charles Lagus, in search of the elusive Picathartes gymnocephalus

1955- Zoo Quest to Guiana
For the second Zoo Quest expedition, Attenborough and Lagus introduced British television viewers to the natural history of South America

1955- The Trans-Antarctic Expedition 1955-58
An occasional series following the progress of Vivian Fuchs and his Commonwealth expedition's successful overland crossing of Antarctica

1956- Zoo Quest for a Dragon
This Zoo Quest series features the first known footage of the Komodo dragon

1957- Quest for the Paradise Birds
Attenborough's first trip to the island of New Guinea in an attempt to film the courtship displays of the native birds of paradise

1959- Zoo Quest in Paraguay
For the fifth Zoo Quest, Attenborough and Lagus returned to South America and visited the grasslands and wetlands of Paraguay

1960- The People of Paradise
A series on the anthropology and natural history of the South Pacific

1960- Travellers' Tales
A long-running series made by Attenborough's BBC Travel and Exploration Unit, which also featured Armand and Michaela Denis's On Safari programmes

1961- Zoo Quest to Madagascar
An expedition to film and collect animals in Madagascar, including lemurs, at the time little-known in Europe

1961- Adventure
The BBC's flagship travel series from the early 1960s, for which Attenborough is credited as narrator or producer of over 30 programmes

1961- Japan
A series presented by Hugh Gibb on the history and culture of the Japanese people

1962- Destruction of the Indian
This short series looked at how contact with the modern world has affected remote Indian tribes of the South American rainforest

1963- Attenborough and Animals
Attenborough's first series for children, in which different species were compared

1963- Quest Under Capricorn
The final Zoo Quest series, filmed in the Northern Territory of Australia, was also Attenborough's final natural history series before moving into BBC management

1965- Zambezi
During a break from studying for an anthropology degree, Attenborough filmed a journey down the Zambezi

1967- Life: East Africa
A series of interviews with African conservationists, filmed during a sabbatical from management duties, for Desmond Morris's Life series on BBC Two

1969- The Miracle of Bali
Attenborough visited the Indonesian island of Bali to film the traditional music and culture

1969- The World About Us
Commissioned during his tenure as Controller of BBC Two, Attenborough narrated around 20 episodes of this long-running series between 1969 and 1982

1971- A Blank on the Map
A one-off programme charting an expedition to a remote part of New Guinea

1973- Eastwards with Attenborough
Attenborough's first natural history series after resigning as BBC Controller took him to South East Asia

1973- Natural Break
A series of short programmes based on archive footage, produced by John Sparks

1973- Royal Institution Christmas Lectures
Attenborough joined a list of distinguished names who have presented the annual science lectures aimed at children, on the subject of The Language of Animals

1975- The Explorers
A series of drama-documentaries recreating the voyages of famous explorers, at the time the most expensive series ever commissioned by the BBC

1975- Fabulous Animals
A series for children's television which featured Attenborough reading from books on mythological creatures

1975- The Tribal Eye
A series on tribal art, of which Attenborough is a keen collector

1976- The Discoverers
A series on pioneering explorers, discoverers and scientists in the field of natural history

1977- Wildlife on One
This series of half-hour natural history programmes for BBC One ran annually until 2005

1979- Life on Earth
Covering the history of life on Earth, this acclaimed series was three years in the making and notable for its groundbreaking footage

1980- The Spirit of Asia
The cultures and religions of the people of Asia

1981- The Ark in South Kensington
A one-off programme to celebrate the centenary of the Natural History Museum in London

1982- Omnibus
Series 16, Episode 6. Attenborough interviews Lucie Rie about her studio pottery

1983- Natural World
BBC Two series still on air, for which Attenborough has narrated or presented over 50 episodes

1984- The Living Planet
The follow-up to Life on Earth was another ambitious global series looking at the variety of habitats on the planet

1985- The Million Pound Bird Book
Attenborough presents a programme on the American naturalist John James Audubon, whose book of life-size bird paintings had recently fetched £1 million at auction

1986- The Queen's Christmas Message
The Queen's annual Christmas Day address to the nation, televised since 1957, which Attenborough produced between 1986 and 1991

1986- World Safari
A live television event featuring broadcasts from across the world, with contributors including The Duke of Edinburgh and Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi

1987- The First Eden
A series on the Mediterranean, examining the natural history of the region and the impact that successive human civilisations have had on the environment

1989- Lost Worlds, Vanished Lives
A series on fossils, a passion that Attenborough has had since childhood

1990- The Trials of Life
The final part of the original Trilogy of Life deals with the animal behaviour, with each episode focussing on a particular stage of animals' lives

1993- Life in the Freezer
A collaboration with Alastair Fothergill, this was the first series devoted to the natural history of Antarctica

1993- Wildlife 100
To mark the 100th episode of Wildlife on One, Attenborough selected his favourite episodes from past series for this special

1994- Heart of a Nomad
Attenborough interviews the British explorer and writer Wilfred Thesiger for a Channel 4 documentary

1995- The Private Life of Plants
In the first of his more specialised Life series, Attenborough brought the world of plants to life using innovations such as timelapse photography

1996- Winners and Losers
A look at how the subjects of early wildlife filmmaker Eugene Schumacher's 1960s documentary The Rare Ones have fared in the intervening years

1996- Q.E.D. "The Secret Life of Seahorses"
Attenborough lends his voice to an episode of BBC One's regular half-hour science series, featuring seahorses

1996- Attenborough in Paradise
Attenborough fulfils a lifelong ambition in New Guinea, where he finally witnesses several birds of paradise species displaying

1997- BBC Wildlife Specials
After a pilot episode on the great white shark in 1995, the Wildlife Special format was developed into a six-part series to mark the Natural History Unit's 40th anniversary in 1997. Further programmes followed on an occasional basis over the following decade

1998- The Life of Birds
For this series, infrared cameras were employed for the first time to film nocturnal birds such as kiwis and shearwaters

1998- The Origin of Species: An Illustrated Guide
Broadcast as part of a BBC season on evolution, this programme used library footage to help explain Charles Darwin's theory

1999- Sharks- The Truth
A programme which seeks to dispel some of the received wisdom surrounding shark behaviour, broadcast as part of BBC One's Shark Summer season

1999- They Said It Couldn't Be Done
On the eve of the millennium, Attenborough interviews a series of leading wildlife film-makers in front of an audience at the Royal Geographical Society to discover the secrets behind some of their most famous programmes

2000- The State of the Planet
Attenborough's first overtly environmental series examines the detrimental impact that modern man is having on the natural world

2000- Living with Dinosaurs
A profile of crocodiles, turtles and other modern reptiles whose ancestry can be traced back to the dinosaurs

2000- The Song of the Earth
A scientific look at the musicality of animals, including the songs of birds, whales and gibbons

2000- The Greatest Wildlife Show on Earth
A Christmas special in which Attenborough travels to some of the world's wildlife hotspots to view spectacular natural events

2000- The Lost Gods of Easter Island
Attenborough traces the provenance of a small wooden carving in his possession back to Easter Island, and recounts the island's troubled past

2000- Bowerbirds: The Art of Seduction
A look at how different species of the male Bowerbirds attract a mate

2001- The Blue Planet
A landmark series on the natural history of the world's oceans, executive-produced by Alastair Fothergill

2002- Life on Air
Michael Palin interviews Attenborough at his home and looks back at highlights from his 50-year television career

2002- The Life of Mammals
To follow up The Life of Birds, Attenborough turned his attention to the mammals, the most successful group of modern animals

2002- Great Natural Wonders of the World
A sequel to The Greatest Wildlife Show on Earth, this programme featured natural wonders such as the Grand Canyon and was again screened at Christmas time

2004- The Amber Time Machine
Attenborough investigates the stories behind the insects captured in Amber millions of years ago

2004- Satoyama: Japan's Secret Water Garden
Documentary about how the local residents of a village in 'Satoyama' live in harmony with nature.

2005- Animal Crime Scene
A series which combined the traditional wildlife documentary format with that of a crime drama

2005- Life in the Undergrowth
Developments in macro and close-up film technology enabled the world of invertebrates to be brought to the screen for the first time

2006- Planet Earth
Billed as "the ultimate portrait of our planet" by the BBC, this is the most expensive documentary series ever made

2006- The Truth About Climate Change
Attenborough is convinced by the evidence for man-made global warming, and uses archive footage from his previous series along with contemporary film to show how climate change is affecting the world

2006- Gorillas Revisited
The story of Rwanda's mountain gorillas reunites Attenborough with the crew who filmed his famous encounter in Life on Earth

2007- Climate Change: Britain Under Threat
Following his recent documentary on the global issue of climate change, Attenborough fronted this programme on the implications for Britain

2007- Trek: Spy in the Wildebeest
A BBC One series which used camouflaged mobile cameras to bring new insight to the Serengeti wildebeest migration

2007- Tom Harrisson: The Barefoot Anthropologist
Part of a season on anthropologists screened on BBC Four, this programme profiled Tom Harrisson, famous for discovering early human remains in Borneo

2007- Sharing Planet Earth
This programme launched the BBC's Saving Planet Earth season, culminating in a live telethon from Kew Gardens to raise funds for endangered species conservation

2007- Attenborough Explores... Our Fragile World
Broadcast on digital channel UKTV Documentary, this specially commissioned programme saw Attenborough again tackle the global environmental crisis

2008- Life in Cold Blood
Attenborough concluded his globetrotting documentaries with the final part of the specialised Life series, featuring reptiles and amphibians

2008- Tiger: Spy in the Jungle
Series following a mother tiger and her three cubs in India, filmed using cameras hidden in the jungle and others carried by elephants

2008- Humpbacks: From Fire to Ice
A documentary made for Australian television on the humpback whale

2009- Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life
Attenborough presents a personal study of the theory of evolution

2009- Nature's Great Events
The film techniques of Planet Earth are deployed to dramatise some of the greatest annual wildlife events on the planet

2009- Uncovering Our Earliest Ancestor: The Link
A special documentary to coincide with the announcement of a 47 million-year-old primate fossil

2009- Life
A landmark series documenting some of the more unusual survival strategies that animals and plants around the globe have evolved

2009- Horizon Special: "How Many People Can Live on Planet Earth?"
A special episode of BBC Two's science strand looking at the issue of global population growth

2010- Genius of Britain
A Channel 4 series celebrating the achievements of British scientists. Attenborough contributed pieces on Christopher Wren and Joseph Banks

2010- Horizon: "The Death of the Oceans"
An edition of Horizon revealing the first findings of the Census of Marine Life

2010- Attenborough's Journey
Attenborough tells anecdotes from his broadcasting career as the cameras follow him filming First Life

2010- David Attenborough's First Life
BBC Two series on the earliest-known complex organisms, referencing the latest fossil evidence

2010- Flying Monsters 3D
Attenborough's first collaboration with Sky, a 3D film about pterosaurs

2011- Madagascar
The natural history of Madagascar

2011- Attenborough and the Giant Egg
The story of aepyornis and its implications for the modern-day conservation efforts

2011- Desert Seas
Wildlife filmmakers are given unprecedented access to the coastal seas off Saudi Arabia

2011- Frozen Planet
A look at the polar regions and their natural history

© The above is copyright of Wikipedia. I do not claim to have typed this myself, as I do not want to create any false information about the above topics, as I am just merely an avid watcher and fan of Sir David Attenborough.