Hosted by David Attenborough, this critically acclaimed TV series is a fascinating history of nature that captures the rarely seen mysteries and splendours of Life On Earth. It took Attenborough and his crew three years of painstaking, patient filming to capture this beautiful footage. It was made by the BBC in association with Warner Bros. and Reiner Moritz Productions. It was transmitted in the UK from 16 January 1979. During the course of the series Attenborough, following the format established by Kenneth Clark's Civilisation and Jacob Bronowski's The Ascent Of Man, travels the globe in order to trace the story of the evolution of life on the planet. Like the earlier series, it was divided into 13 programmes (each of around 55 minutes' duration) so that it would exactly fill a scheduler's quarter-year. The executive producer was Christopher Parsons and the music was composed by Edward Williams. Highly acclaimed, it is the first in Attenborough's 'Life' series of programmes and was followed by The Living Planet (1984).