''Galápagos'' is a three-part

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

nature documentary A nature documentary or wildlife documentary is a genre of documentary film or television documentary, series about animals, plants, or other non-human living creatures. Nature documentaries usually concentrate on video taken in the subject's nat ...

series exploring the

natural history Natural history is a domain of inquiry involving organisms, including animals, fungi, and plants, in their natural environment, leaning more towards observational than experimental methods of study. A person who studies natural history is cal ...

of the

Galápagos Islands The Galápagos Islands () are an archipelago of volcanic islands in the Eastern Pacific, located around the equator, west of the mainland of South America. They form the Galápagos Province of the Republic of Ecuador, with a population of sli ...

and their important role in the formation of

Charles Darwin Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English Natural history#Before 1900, naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all speci ...

's theory of

evolution Evolution is the change in the heritable Phenotypic trait, characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. It occurs when evolutionary processes such as natural selection and genetic drift act on genetic variation, re ...

. It was first transmitted in the UK on

BBC Two BBC Two is a British free-to-air Public service broadcasting in the United Kingdom, public broadcast television channel owned and operated by the BBC. It is the corporation's second flagship channel, and it covers a wide range of subject matte ...

in September 2006. The series was filmed in high definition, produced by Mike Gunton and Patrick Morris of the

BBC Natural History Unit The BBC Studios Natural History Unit (NHU) is a department of BBC Studios that produces television, radio and online content with a natural history or wildlife theme. It is best known for its highly regarded nature documentaries, including '' T ...

and narrated by actress

Tilda Swinton Katherine Matilda Swinton (born 5 November 1960) is a British actress. She is known for playing eccentric and enigmatic characters, often working with auteurs. Her accolades include an Academy Award, two BAFTA Awards, and a Volpi Cup, in addit ...

. The series was proposed to the BBC by the principal cinematographers Paul D. Stewart and Richard Wollocombe.

Episodes

The episodes, each 50 minutes in length, are as follows: * "Born of Fire" - an introduction to the volcanic islands * "Islands that Changed the World" - reveals how the islands helped shape the theory of evolution * "Forces of Change" - how life has evolved to cope with climatic and volcanic changes Some of the endemic wildlife featured in the series includes

frigatebird Frigatebirds are a Family (biology), family of seabirds called Fregatidae which are found across all tropical and subtropical oceans. The five extant species are classified in a single genus, ''Fregata''. All have predominantly black plumage, l ...

marine iguana The marine iguana (''Amblyrhynchus cristatus''), also known as the sea iguana, saltwater iguana, or Galápagos marine iguana, is a species of Iguanidae, iguana found only on the Galápagos Islands (Ecuador). Unique among modern lizards, it is a m ...

flightless cormorant The flightless cormorant (''Nannopterum harrisi''), also known as the Galapagos cormorant, is a cormorant endemic to the Galapagos Islands, and an example of the highly unusual fauna there. It is unique in that it is the only known cormorant th ...

Galápagos tortoise The Galápagos tortoise or Galápagos giant tortoise (''Chelonoidis niger'') is a very large species of tortoise in the genus ''Chelonoidis'' (which also contains three smaller species from mainland South America). The species comprises 15 subsp ...

s, Galápagos finches and blue-footed boobies.

Awards

The opening episode "Born of Fire" won four awards at the 2007 International Wildlife Film Festival in

Missoula Missoula ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Missoula County, Montana, Missoula County, Montana, United States. It is located along the Clark Fork River near its confluence with the Bitterroot River, Bitterroot and Blackfoot River (Montana), ...

. It won "Best of Festival" at the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival 2007 and won a prestigious

Peabody Award The George Foster Peabody Awards (or simply Peabody Awards or the Peabodys) program, named for the American businessman and philanthropist George Foster Peabody, George Peabody, honor what are described as the most powerful, enlightening, and in ...

in the same year. Horace Newcomb, director of the Peabody Awards, described the first episode as one of the most beautiful things he has ever seen. It was also

BAFTA The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA, ) is an independent trade association and charity that supports, develops, and promotes the arts of film, television and video games in the United Kingdom. In addition to its annual awa ...

Royal Television Society The Royal Television Society (RTS) is a British-based educational charity for the discussion, and analysis of television in all its forms, past, present, and future. It is the oldest television society in the world. It currently has fourteen r ...

, WildScreen &

Emmy The Emmy Awards, or Emmys, are an extensive range of awards for artistic and technical merit for the television industry. A number of annual Emmy Award ceremonies are held throughout the year, each with their own set of rules and award catego ...

nominated for cinematography and won further awards for its photography from the Guild of Television Cameramen and the Japanese Wildlife Film Festival in 2007. Galapagos DVD and Blu-ray sales in the USA were second only to Planet Earth and Blue Planet in BBC Worldwide Natural History sales for three years after its release.

Merchandise

A DVD, Blu-ray, soundtrack CD and book were released to accompany the TV series: * A Region 2, 2-disc DVD set (BBCDVD1997) featuring all three full-length episodes was released on 30 October 2006. The DVD includes the specially-commissioned 60-minute documentary, "Lonesome George and the Battle for Galápagos", originally broadcast alongside ''Galápagos'' on

BBC Four BBC Four is a British free-to-air Public service broadcasting in the United Kingdom, public broadcast television channel owned and operated by the BBC. It was launched on 2 March 2002

. * The series was released on a region-free

Blu-ray Blu-ray (Blu-ray Disc or BD) is a digital optical disc data storage format designed to supersede the DVD format. It was invented and developed in 2005 and released worldwide on June 20, 2006, capable of storing several hours of high-defin ...

disc (BBCBD0011) on 12 November 2007. This disc shows the film in a

1080i In high-definition television (HDTV) and video display technology, 1080i is a video display format with 1080 lines of vertical resolution and Interlaced video, interlaced scanning method. This format was once a standard in HDTV. It was particular ...

picture. * The accompanying paperback book, ''Galápagos: The Islands that Changed the World'' by Paul D. Stewart, with a foreword by

Richard Dawkins Richard Dawkins (born 26 March 1941) is a British evolutionary biology, evolutionary biologist, zoologist, science communicator and author. He is an Oxford fellow, emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford, and was Simonyi Professor for the Publ ...

, was published by BBC Books on 7 September 2006 (). * Soundtrack CD with music created by

Paul Leonard-Morgan Paul Leonard-Morgan (born 1974) is a Scottish composer particularly known for his work in scoring for television and film. He won a Scottish BAFTA for the film ''Reflections upon the Origin of the Pineapple'' (2000), which was his first film s ...

was released in 2006.

References

External links

*
GalapagosTV: the video blog
{{DEFAULTSORT:Galapagos (Tv Series) BBC television documentaries Documentary films about nature BBC high definition shows 2006 British television series debuts 2006 British television series endings Peabody Award–winning television programs Films set on the Galápagos Islands National Geographic (American TV channel) original programming Documentary television shows about evolution

Episodes

Awards

Merchandise

See also

References

External links