The Dinosaurs Brings a Lost World Back to Life in New Docuseries

Featuring Steven Spielberg among its executive producers, The Dinosaurs is a groundbreaking documentary series following their rise and fall.

The documentary series arrives amid a recent wave of documentaries revisiting the prehistoric age. In recent years, audiences have had an opportunity to watch Dinosaurs: The Final Day with David Attenborough, Prehistoric Planet, and Prehistoric Planet 2. I watched the first of those in June 2023 after watching the disastrous 65 following its release on home video, and that was the first time I learned that it wasn’t 65 million years ago but actually 66 million years ago. What this means is that the Jurassic Park tagline needs to be updated.

The Dinosaurs is a four-part documentary series, but the epic production makes for a quick binge, with most episodes running around 45 minutes, give or take. It’s beautifully scored by Lorne Balfe, who brings the right mood to each and every frame. If you’re into dinosaurs as much as I am—who wouldn’t be because of The Land Before Time or Jurassic Park?—this is a can’t-miss documentary series. Whether four episodes is truly enough, I don’t know. That being said, the series still packs a lot of punch into the runtime. Aside from narrator Morgan Freeman guiding audiences through the docuseries, there isn’t a single talking head.

While most documentaries related to animals feature awesome cinematography and cinematographers risking their lives in some instances, this one is different. For this one, you’d have to go back in time millions and millions of years. I don’t know just how many DeLorean time machines were required to capture every frame that makes it into The Dinosaurs. G-d only knows how much footage didn’t make the cut. I kid, I kid. Amblin Documentaries and Silverback Films worked with Industrial Light & Magic, and the results are just stupendous.

Over 30 years have passed since Michael Crichton wrote Jurassic Park and Steven Spielberg changed my life when he brought it to the screen in June 1993. Much has changed in what we know about dinosaurs since that time, and a number of those changes were incorporated into later films, including the idea that the dinosaurs are related to birds. The idea itself truly sounds absurd, given just how small birds are when compared to the massive creatures that roamed the planet, but we can see hints of that connection through the footage depicted on screen.

Discussing dinosaurs also means discussing their existence alongside religious views (primarily Judaism, as that’s the lens through which I write). The documentary doesn’t get into creation vs. evolution, nor does it need to. For my religious readers, I remind you of what it says in Shabbat 88b of the Talmud:

“Since the Torah, the word of G-d, was given to the twenty-sixth generation after Adam, the first man, the remaining 974 generations must have preceded the creation of the world.”

We just don’t know how many years those generations took place over. The Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, offered his own thoughts on the theories of evolution in a 1961 letter listed under “The Age of the Universe.” For what it’s worth, Modern Orthodoxy has its own views regarding science. But anyway, educator David Schwartz offers additional thoughts about dinosaurs in this Sefaria source sheet. Fascinating stuff.

The Dinosaurs brings a lost world back to life, and the documentary series is every bit as epic as a story about dinosaurs needs to be.

SHOWRUNNER: Dan Tapster
SERIES DIRECTOR: Nick Shoolingin-Jordan
PRODUCER/DIRECTORS: Jolyon Sutcliffe, Amber Cherry Eames, Darren Williams
EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS: Steven Spielberg, Darryl Frank, Justin Falvey, Keith Scholey, Alastair Fothergill
NARRATOR: Morgan Freeman