Planet Dinosaur is a six-part documentary

Documentary

A documentary is a creative work of non-fiction, including:* Documentary film, including television* Radio documentary* Documentary photographyRelated terms include:...

 television

Television

Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...

 series

Series

series may refer to anything of a serial form:-Mathematics and science:* Series , a taxonomic rank between genus and species* Series , the sum of a sequence of terms* Series circuits, a kind of electrical network...

 produced by the BBC

BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

, narrated by John Hurt

John Hurt

John Vincent Hurt, CBE is an English actor, known for his leading roles as John Merrick in The Elephant Man, Winston Smith in Nineteen Eighty-Four, Mr. Braddock in The Hit, Stephen Ward in Scandal, Quentin Crisp in The Naked Civil Servant and An Englishman in New York...

, first aired in the United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 in 2011, produced by VFX studio

Studio

A studio is an artist's or worker's workroom, or the catchall term for an artist and his or her employees who work within that studio. This can be for the purpose of architecture, painting, pottery , sculpture, scrapbooking, photography, graphic design, filmmaking, animation, radio or television...

 Jellyfish Pictures. It is the first major dinosaur-related series for BBC One

BBC One

BBC One is the flagship television channel of the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It was launched on 2 November 1936 as the BBC Television Service, and was the world's first regular television service with a high level of image resolution...

 since Walking with Dinosaurs

Walking with Dinosaurs

Walking with Dinosaurs is a six-part documentary television miniseries that was produced by BBC, narrated by Kenneth Branagh, and first aired in the United Kingdom, in 1999. The series was subsequently aired in North America on the Discovery Channel in 2000, with Branagh's voice replaced with that...

. There are more than 50 different prehistoric species

Species

In biology, a species is one of the basic units of biological classification and a taxonomic rank. A species is often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring. While in many cases this definition is adequate, more precise or differing measures are...

 featured, and they and their environments were created entirely as computer-generated images, for only a third of the production cost that was needed a decade earlier for Walking with Dinosaurs. The companion book to the series was released on 8 September 2011 and the DVD on 24 October 2011.

Spin-offs

CBBC aired a spin-off

Spin-off (media)

In media, a spin-off is a radio program, television program, video game, or any narrative work, derived from one or more already existing works, that focuses, in particular, in more detail on one aspect of that original work...

, Planet Dinosaur Files, from 29 September, 2011, hosted by Jem Stansfield

Jem Stansfield

Jem Stansfield is an inventor and television presenter, currently working in the United Kingdom. He has appeared on Scrapheap Challenge , Science Shack , Home On Their Own , Zero to Hero , Men in White , Bang Goes the Theory , Wild Thing I Love You , and Planet Mechanics Jem Stansfield is an...

. Each episode compares three Mesozoic creatures and involves practical tests to replicate certain behaviours in an attempt to find out which creature holds a certain title, such as the "most powerful" theropod. A 60-minute 3-D

Stereoscopy

Stereoscopy refers to a technique for creating or enhancing the illusion of depth in an image by presenting two offset images separately to the left and right eye of the viewer. Both of these 2-D offset images are then combined in the brain to give the perception of 3-D depth...

 spin-off of Planet Dinosaur will air in early 2012.

Reception

Tom Sutcliffe of the Independent found that it was visually "polished and jazzed up" but that the "knowledge and science generally take second place to B-movie spectacle".

List of episodes

#		|Era		|Writer(s)		UK viewers (million)