Season 1

Life (2009), Season 1 is the BBC nature documentary you can watch online on iFILM, ten episodes narrated by David Attenborough. Four years of filming, roughly 3,000 shooting days, one question: how far will animals and plants go just to survive and breed.

Each episode hands the screen to a different branch of life. It opens with "Challenges of Life," a survey of the extremes creatures reach to pass on their genes, then works through reptiles and amphibians, mammals, fish, birds, insects, a chapter on hunters and the hunted, the creatures of the deep, plants, and finally primates. The footage is the point: hundreds of Humboldt squid hunting as a pack, a killer whale luring elephant seal pups with a sly bit of stagecraft, a bombardier beetle firing boiling spray caught in super slow motion.

Made by the BBC Natural History Unit, the same team behind Planet Earth, the series leans on behaviour over scenery. The camera chases specific survival tricks rather than postcard landscapes, and that focus is its strength. Stream Life Season 1 online on iFILM.