Airdate: Earth

BBC nature series Earth looks back to a time when the sky and the seas were sepia-tinted, and giant fungi dominated the landscape.

The five part series is narrated by Chris Packham and brought to life by mesmerising visual effects.

This revealing biography of Earth explores the planet’s most epic moments. From the first raindrops that turned it into a water world to the arrival of its most incredible inhabitants, us. But humans take a back seat in this narrative. Instead, Earth is placed centre stage. We see what happened to our world before we even crawled from the mud – including massive bombardments from space, extreme changes in climate and the collision of whole continents.

Episode One: Inferno

Inferno explores the dramatic moment nearly all life on Earth was wiped out.

In Inferno, we explore one of the darkest periods in Earth’s history: the worst mass extinction the planet has ever seen, when as much as 90% of all species died, 252 million years ago. This extraordinary moment in Earth’s history took life to the brink wreaking havoc and destruction on an unprecedented scale.

But somehow, life found a way to bounce back, and a new geological era ushered in the age of the dinosaurs. The story begins with a massive volcanic eruption: the Siberian Traps eruption lasted for 2 million years and created enough lava field to cover an aera the size of Australia. Life in the immediate vicinity was no doubt vaporized, but the fossil record reveals a bigger mystery – a strange ‘line of death’ in rock formations all over the world that indicates almost all life dying out, no matter how close it was to the lava field. We uncover what the latest science reveals about the aftermath of the eruption, and the terrifying series of events that led to the global mass dying.

It’s a stark cautionary tale of how rapid climate change can cause whole ecosystems to collapse, but the fossil record also hints at Earth’s miraculous powers of reinvention. We discover clues in rocky mountain ranges to one of greatest deluges in the planet’s history – a downpour lasting on and off for almost 2 million years that transformed conditions and led life to bounce back in extraordinary style, with the rise and eventual domination of the dinosaurs.

9pm Tuesday January 23 on ABC.