In an era where trilogies dominate cultural landscapes—from The Lord of the Rings to The Matrix—the BBC’s groundbreaking Walking With... series proved no exception. What began with 1999’s Walking With Dinosaurs, a revolutionary blend of documentary realism and CGI spectacle, expanded into a sprawling prehistoric saga. Its sequel, Walking With Beasts (2001), explored the post-dinosaur world of mammals, leaving one chronological gap: the vast, enigmatic era before the dinosaurs. Tim Haines, the franchise’s visionary creator, closed this loop with 2005’s Walking With Monsters, a prequel that ventures into Earth’s primordial past. While lacking the immediate awe of its predecessors, the series remains a fascinating, if uneven, capstone to the trilogy, offering a whirlwind tour of life’s earliest evolutionary struggles.
Where Walking With Beasts logically followed dinosaurs’ extinction, Monsters defies narrative convention by rewinding 500 million years. Its focus? The bizarre, often alien creatures that dominated the planet long before T. rex or Triceratops evolved. From giant sea scorpions to synapsid proto-mammals, the series excavates evolutionary milestones rarely depicted outside academic texts. This backward glance is both its strength and weakness: while the novelty of Cambrian trilobites or Permian gorgonopsids captivates, the absence of iconic dinosaurs risks alienating casual viewers. The result is a documentary that feels more like an educational supplement than a standalone spectacle—a deliberate choice that reshapes the trilogy into a holistic chronicle of life’s ascent.
Monsters diverges structurally from its six-episode forebears, condensing Earth’s pre-dinosaur history into three brisk instalments. Each episode stitches together multiple geological periods, prioritising evolutionary storytelling over immersive vignettes. For instance, Episode 1 (“Water Dwellers”) vaults from the Cambrian explosion (540 million years ago) to the Devonian age, tracing vertebrates’ first tentative steps onto land. This compresses eons into 30-minute segments, trading the leisurely pacing of Dinosaurs for a frenetic, lecture-like cadence. While this approach risks oversimplification, it smartly sidesteps the speculative pitfalls of earlier series—fewer speculative behaviours mean fewer scientific inaccuracies. Yet the format also dulls the emotional resonance of individual creatures; where Dinosaurs made stars of specific T. rex or Diplodocus, Monsters reduces its animals to evolutionary chess pieces.
”Water Dwellers” opens with a cosmic prologue: the Theia impact that birthed the Moon and stabilised Earth’s climate. From there, it plunges into the Cambrian’s arthropod-dominated seas, where Anomalocaris—a nightmarish, shrimp-like predator—reigns supreme. The episode then leaps to the Silurian period, spotlighting Cephalaspis, a jawless fish whose bony headshield hints at vertebrates’ future. Finally, the Devonian segment introduces Hynerpeton, a salamander-like amphibian whose land excursions are stalked by monstrous fish like Hyneria. The transitions feel abrupt, but the throughline—life’s gradual conquest of land—holds firm.
“Reptile’s Beginnings”, the second episode, charts amphibians’ metamorphosis into true reptiles. The Carboniferous segment teems with giant dragonflies and arachnids, their growth inflated by Earth’s oxygen-rich atmosphere. Here, the tiny reptile Petrolacosaurus scurries underfoot, evading predators like the spider-like Megarachne. A shift to the arid Permian introduces synapsids—reptilian ancestors of mammals—including the sail-backed Dimetrodon. A standout sequence follows a Dimetrodon female guarding her eggs, a rare glimpse of parental care in prehistory.
“Clash of Titans”, the third episode, bridges the Permian’s end with the Triassic dawn. Desert-dwelling Diictodon—burrowing, beaked reptiles—outlast apex predators like Gorgonopsids, whose dominance collapses amid climate shifts. The Triassic segment pivots to Lystrosaurus, a pig-sized survivor whose herds migrate through Pangaea’s wastes, hunted by crocodilian ancestors. The finale introduces Euparkeria, a nimble reptile whose lineage would birth dinosaurs. This explicit setup for Walking With Dinosaurs feels overly tidy, but it bookends the trilogy with thematic symmetry.
Technologically, Monsters benefits from six years of progress since Dinosaurs. CGI creatures move with fluid realism, their textures and lighting eclipsing the occasionally rubbery models of 1999. Animatronics are sparingly used, reserved for close-ups of creatures like Dimetrodon. The series also innovates with anatomical cross-sections, revealing internal organs to illustrate evolutionary adaptations—an inspired touch that educates without overwhelming. Kenneth Branagh’s narration remains a steady anchor, his sonorous tones lending gravitas to even the most arcane topics. Ben Bartlett’s score, though less iconic than Dinosaurs’ orchestral themes, complements the eerie, primordial ambiance with discordant strings and primal rhythms.
Walking With Monsters arrived in a landscape saturated with prehistoric programming—from Sea Monsters to Prehistoric Park—and suffered by comparison. Lacking the novelty of Dinosaurs or the relatable mammals of Beasts, it garnered modest acclaim and lower ratings. Yet this overlooks its merits: the series distills 300 million years of evolution into a coherent narrative, a feat unmatched by competitors. Its tighter runtime and focus on scientific explanation make it an ideal classroom tool, albeit one less thrilling than its predecessors.
Walking With Monsters is neither the trilogy’s crown jewel nor its weak link. It is, rather, a workmanlike conclusion—less concerned with spectacle than with stitching together life’s origin story. For paleontology enthusiasts, it’s a treasure trove of obscure species and evolutionary theory. For general audiences, its rushed pace and absence of “star” creatures may underwhelm. Yet as the final chapter in Haines’ trilogy, it fulfils its mandate: to trace life’s unbroken thread from primordial ooze to dinosaur dawn. In that, it succeeds—not with a roar, but with a measured, educational whisper.
RATING: 7/10 (+++)
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