Walking with... is a palaeontology media franchise produced and broadcast by the BBC Natural History Unit. The franchise began with the critically acclaimed series Walking with Dinosaurs (1999), created by Tim Haines. By far the most watched science programme in British television history, Walking with Dinosaurs spawned numerous companion material and four sequel series: Walking with Beasts (2001), Walking with Cavemen (2003), Sea Monsters (2003) and Walking with Monsters (2005). Each series uses a combination of computer-generated imagery and animatronics, incorporated with live action footage shot at various locations, to portray prehistoric animals in the style of a traditional nature documentary.
The Walking with... programmes were praised for their special effects and for their science communication. Though largely praised by scientists for the effort to adhere to science and for portraying prehistoric life as animals rather than movie monsters, some academic criticism has been leveled at the series for not making clear through their narration what is speculative and what is based in fact.
In addition to the five main series, the success of Walking with... also led to the production of the Walking with Dinosaurs special episodes The Ballad of Big Al, The Giant Claw and Land of Giants. The franchise has also been accompanied by several books, merchandise, video games and the live theatrical show Walking with Dinosaurs − The Arena Spectacular. In 2013, a movie based on Walking with Dinosaurs, with the same name, was directed by Neil Nightingale and Barry Cook.
Development
Walking with Dinosaurs was devised by the then BBC-employed science television producer Tim Haines in 1996. Inspired by the 1993 film Jurassic Park, Haines envisioned a more science-based documentary programme using the same techniques as Jurassic Park to bring dinosaurs to life. Though such a series was initially feared to be far too expensive to produce, particularly considering the production costs of Jurassic Park, Haines managed to bring down the costs through working with the award-winning UK-based graphics company Framestore. It was only after the production of a six-minute pilot episode in 1997 that Haines managed to secure funding for the series; Walking with Dinosaurs was funded by the BBC, BBC Worldwide and the Discovery Channel, alongside major investments from TV Asahi in Japan and ProSieben in Germany. At a cost of £6.1 million ($9.9 million), Walking with Dinosaurs cost over £37,654 ($61,112) per minute to produce, making it the most expensive documentary series per minute ever made. The visual effects of Walking with Dinosaurs were done by Framestore and the puppets and animatronics were done by the special effects company Crawley Creatures.
The success of Walking with Dinosaurs led to the rapid creation of Walking with... as a brand of documentary series. In the aftermath of Walking with Dinosaurs, Haines founded the production company Impossible Pictures together with Jasper James, one of the producers on Walking with Dinosaurs.
2000 saw the release of a special episode of Dinosaurs, The Ballad of Big Al, focusing on a single Allosaurus specimen. The first entire sequel series released in 2001: Walking with Beasts, which explored the life of the Cenozoic, after the age of the dinosaurs. Like Walking with Dinosaurs before it, Beasts was the idea of Haines. Haines wished to introduce the general public to the assortment of animals of the Cenozoic, typically less represented in popular culture than the dinosaurs. Haines served as executive producer on the series, with James and Nigel Paterson producing and directing. Beasts was in terms of effects more challenging to produce than Dinosaurs, owing to mammals having features such as fur, whiskers, eyebrows and various floppy parts absent in dinosaurs, and to audiences being more familiar with how mammals move and act and thus better at spotting mistakes.