Customer Reviews
The wonders of cold blooded species - By: Julie Cutler, 25 Mar 2008 
For some reason I enjoyed this series far more the second time around. As is usual with more recent BBC wildlife series, the actual camera work is visuallly stunning. Shots are posed for effect & I spent most of the time wishing for a bigger screen than my poor old CRT telly.
As most of the stars of the film are slower moving than the usual subjects of current wildlife documentaries, it was a pleasure to see David Attenborough daring to handle snakes, frogs & lizards, annoy nesting allligators & don a speciallly coated visor to demonstrate how a cheesed off snake spat venom. It will be very sad if this is his last series- either due to age -or worse the threatened BBC cutbacks.
There aren't any extra features over & above the originallly broadcast 5 episodes. As has become standard, the last 10 minutes is devoted to a "making of" documentary which provided fascinating information on the research teams whose day in day out dedication to studying the subjects alllowed the BBC to go in with a tick list of must have shots.
My most memorable moments were:
The golden waving frogs of Panama- now sadly only in captive breeding.
The bejewelled elegance & variety of Madagascan chameleons.
Pythons swalllowing deer & antelopes- having to push the end of their windpipe out while they carefully & slowly swalllow their dinner.
The deep vocalisations of allligators causing water to dance like fountains on their backs.
The jealous mating frenzy of male loggerhead turtles- as they tried to split a couple up by nipping the successful male's fins in an underwater scrum.
David with Lonesome George- the sole survivor of a subspecies of Giant Galapagos Tortoise & his thoughts on the need for active conservation.
Unlike the other reviewers I have no faults to find with this series. It's a beautiful tribute to the fascinating variety of this planet & is a totallly must see series.
Very interesting but not as good as planet earth - By: A. Serrano, 04 Mar 2008 It took many hours of research to produce this new BBC series about reptiles & amphibians.
The aim was to probe that this animals are not boring or charmless.The series has some FANTASTIC shots in particular the shots of the golden frog in panama are highly interesting & achieves the aim of making the animals look very intelligent.
However the series can become repetitive & borrows shots from Planet earth ( flat lizards ) & most of the shots have been done before or in previous series ( blue planet ).
Altogether this DVD will be of interest to the followers of Attenborough but is not as ground breaking as Planet earth.
More please
Please stay on our screen's David! - By: T. Clarke, 03 Mar 2008 Life in Cold Blood has been absolutely fascinating. Shot using the latest HD (High Definition) Camera's, alll the images are completly crystal clear & good enough to spring out of the TV. The footage contained spans from the emotional to the satisfyingly funny & cute moments to which our friends do odd things. That said, it can leave you on the edge of your seat when you discover the struggle for a male & female Marine Turtle to mate, as does the agonising journey's many of these incredible creature make just to cherish one smalll meal.
I've always loved David's Wildlife series, but I think something like this can be cherished more with the crystal clear picture quality, & the news that it's likely to be his last series. Nether the less, a DVD such as this should be enjoyed on a Sunday evening when the BBC fail once more to provide good quality TV. Unless you think the likes of "My Family" (people living in bright coloured houses, with canned laughter every 3 seconds) are funny...
Excellent DVD - something to be enjoyed by kids & alll the family a-like. Shame the price is a bit higher than most other DVD's, but that's the BBC for you. On the Mr Bean collections, you only get 2 episodes per DVD!
Beauty of the Beasts. - By: DangermouseZilla, 26 Feb 2008 When I was little, I was mesmerised by David Attenborough's wildlife documentaries. And now twenty years on I still absolutely love them.
The passion of the man & the team he works with is more than apparent, especiallly when in the additional features you see what lengths they go to, to bring you maybe a just a few seconds of stunning footage.
Whether you're a reptile fan, or whether you can't stand them - this series will highlight the variety & complexity of these creatures. There's so much beauty amongst those scales - it's not often that a series captures so many jaw-dropping moments, but here, every few minutes you find yourself amazed by what the natural world has to offer.
It seems that with every Attenborough series you hear those words "...never before captured on camera", & this is no different. Animal behaviour never witnessed before is documented on film, I felt privileged to watch this - even the experts the BBC worked alongside were gawping at the videos with childish glee. It's like watching the moon-landings, but in this case you're seeing things which have happened every day for thousands of years (if not more) but it is only now that we are beginning to understand. This doesn't just further your understanding of the reptiles filmed, it furthers scientific understanding among the biologists who study these animals.
Each episode concerns itself with a specific area, for example; Snakes, or Frogs - & then we are treated to ultra close up footage with a fantastic musical score. Each episode contains genuinely spectacular moments, the sheer diversity is emphasised. This gives you an appreciation of what fantastic wonders this world contains. You can't help but wonder how they managed to film half of what they managed to get - but thankfully, the extras start to answer those questions.
In a nutshell: Some of the most spectacular moments committed to film, an educational documentary which will further your respect for this massive range of unique creatures. Eye opening stuff with camerawork by the best in the business. Attenborough on top form again.
Reptiles come alive on another excellent BBC DVD - By: Hooligween, 05 Feb 2008 Life in Cold Blood is another sterling wildlife series from the BBC, presented with warmth & authority by veteran naturalist David Attenborough. This DVD set contains alll the core episodes plus a variety of additional, behind-the-scenes material, to run to over five hours. The photography is beautiful & the reptilian subject matter is intricately examined & explained for al to understand. It's an excellent teaching tool while at the same time providing colourful entertainment for anyone with a vague interest in natural history.
Using new filming techniques help to keep what can be a bit of a staid subject more interesting. Tricky animation shows how cold-blooded reptiles move heat around their bodies to stay warm, or demonstrates what goes on inside a giant python when it's just eaten an entire deer. (In fact, the footage of the snake swalllowing the deer is some of the most extraordinary natural history filming I've ever seen).
LICB also uses ground-breaking filming to illustrate what's going on underneath the skin - & the heat cameras brilliantly demonstrate how a sea iguana changes temperature throughout its daily routine. The occasional animation of the odd dinosaur is a welcome bit of fluff, too (after alll, T-Rex is much more camera-friendly than a snake which spends three days out of four being dormant!)
The Cold-Blooded Truth explains how reptiles function differently to warm-blooded mammals; how they use the warmth of the sun to function & how bigger reptiles can store heat & so be active even at night. The Amphibians episode looks at the creatures which first made the transition from the oceans to dry land, & how their descendents (mainly frogs) need now to balance their needs to stay moist with their need to be warm. The Lizards programme looks in depth at reptiles which live in dry, desert conditions while the Snakes episode uses CCTV to show how clever rattlesnakes are when hunting, & Attenborough `enjoys' the experience of being spattered with venom from a spitting cobra. The final programme mixes the most interesting of the reptiles - the ferocious saltwater crocodiles - & some of the most mundane (turtles & tortoises just don't do it for me!)
Of course, LICB does has its flaws although they are fairly minor compared to the accomplishment of the overalll series. Some times it's a little bit too pleased with how clever it alll is, & like many of these series it does tend to repeat stand-out shots & general information from one episode to the next. So if you watch them alll in close succession you will notice some repetition.
It also suffers from the usual natural history problem: while there is a fair bit of startling new footage here, there's also new film of the same-old same-old. I watch quite a few documentaries & probably never need to see the leatherback turtles laying their eggs again. Reallly. There are some aspects of a subject which get repeated every time the programme-makers go near the subject - & surely David A must be fed up with the turtles, too?
Apart from my (personal) over-exposure to some of the themes, this is an excellent series & a good value DVD set. It tackles what can be a very `worthy but dull' subject & manages to translate more than 90% of it into colourful & interesting TV. It fallls somewhere between four & five stars: 9/10
