- Network: PBS
- Series Premiere Date: Feb 4, 2026
Critic Reviews
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I’m only on episode two of BBC One’s gorgeous new high-production nature series, Parenthood, and already I’ve been radicalised. The five-part programme, combining the exquisite narration from Sir David Attenborough and sublime visual storytelling we’ve come to expect from this kind of affair.
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If the script isn’t always the sharpest – “parenthood is a journey like no other,” Attenborough says at one point – it really doesn’t matter when the visuals are this good.
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This is wonderful, spectacular, premium camerawork, as ever, Attenborough’s chocolatey narration second to none.
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The trek into the dry wilderness for food looks as if it will develop into an allegory about the difficulty of performing crucial tasks with a toddler trailing behind, but then lions turn up, so it devolves into the old story of one of the pack losing their nerve and becoming a cat treat. If lions are to keep their place as the stars of nature documentaries, they need to come up with some new ideas.
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There is nothing here we haven’t seen before – or that’s how it feels, anyway. We’ve been spoilt over the years by top-quality nature programming. It has the obligatory “how we made it” section at the end, once a novelty but now standard.