Human Planet web exclusives

"Human Planet is the very first BBC landmark series to focus on human beings rather than animals and, as a result, it gave birth to Human Planet Explorer.

My team went to some of the most remote and inaccessible locations on earth, visiting every continent, apart from Antarctica. Each episode in the eight part series is based around one iconic environment – oceans, deserts, arctic, jungles, mountains, grasslands, rivers and cities. For each episode we looked for the most incredible stories imaginable, personal real life dramas about people who still live in “the wild places”. We even discovered that cities can be pretty wild in their own way!

Over two intensive filming years we shot over 70 stories for the main series but we were always on the look out for extra stories for the website. This was really important for the production team and whenever location, weather and wildlife allowed we tried to find extra stories to film. We were all incredibly aware of how privileged we were to be able to film such remarkable people living the most incredible lives.

Some of these clips are extras from sequences you may see in the main series but many are totally new stories featuring different people but all shot on the locations we visited.

We never travelled light, filming such a technically demanding and high spec HD series meant that we had to lug hundreds of kilos of kit to places that were often inaccessible by road or air. In Nepal we trekked for days at altitude in the freezing cold. In the arctic we travelled by dog sled. We rode horses in Mongolia and for the oceans episode we travelled in boats of all shapes and sizes. Even when we got to location things were rarely easy. Many of the sequences often involved wildlife and wild weather doing the right things at the right time!

With the inexorable march of the modern world many cultures, languages and practices are disappearing at an alarming rate. In some cases whole societies are vanishing. We have undoubtedly reached a turning point for the Human species. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing but what we have been able to do is to produce a lasting record of the incredible skills, diversity, ingenuity and bravery that still make up today’s Human Planet."

Watch the series trailer.

Dale Templar, Series Producer