Earth - Season 1

First aired: 7/17/2023 5 episodes

Over five episodes, Chris Packham sets out a biography of our planet, revealing the most epic moments from the Earth’s history, from the first seconds of its existence to the arrival of its most incredible inhabitants: us.

← Back to Earth

Episodes

1. Inferno

Aired: 7/17/2023

Chris Packham explores one of the darkest periods in Earth’s history: the worst mass extinction the planet has ever seen, when as much as 90% of all species died 252 million years ago. This extraordinary moment in Earth’s history took life to the brink, wreaking havoc and destruction on an unprecedented scale. But, somehow, life found a way to bounce back, and a new geological era ushered in the age of the dinosaurs.

2. Snowball

Aired: 7/24/2023

Earth’s terrifying journey into the deep freeze starts with fire, not ice. 800 million years ago, long before the age of the dinosaurs, before there was even animal life, the giant supercontinent Rodinia breaks up. Earth’s vast powerful tectonic forces rip the land apart, kicking off a series of events that results in huge amounts of carbon dioxide being sucked from the atmosphere and sending global temperatures plummeting.

3. Green

Aired: 7/31/2023

Chris Packham tells the miraculous story of how plant life turned Earth from a barren rock into a vibrant green world - a four-billion year saga of extraordinary highs and lows that almost wiped out all life on the planet. Beginning as a water world without land masses, a giant asteroid bombardment triggered Earth's plate tectonics, leading to huge fungi, soil and giant swamp forests. But the early plants locked so much carbon dioxide that global temperatures suddenly plunged.

4. Atmosphere

Aired: 8/7/2023

When Earth first formed from clouds of dust and gas 4.6 billion years ago, it was - like so many other lifeless worlds in the universe - devoid of an atmosphere, an inhospitable rock floating in the black void of space. But as the young planet is pummelled by asteroids, a period of extraordinary upheaval begins.

5. Human

Aired: 8/14/2023

Today, Earth is a human world, home to eight billion people and counting. Humans now have a greater effect in shaping Earth’s surface than many natural processes. Chris Packham explores how dramatic twists in Earth’s story enabled humans to go from being part of nature to controlling it and what can be learnt from this epic tale before it’s too late.