Make no mistake, CGI dinosaur shows have been, for a long time, a dime-a-dozen. WALKING WITH DINOSAURS set the bar for the new wave of documentary-style dinosaur shows. There have been literally dozens of these things peppering various channels, and they range from decent if a little absurd (such as PREHISTORIC PARK) to crappy padded nonsense (ala JURASSIC FIGHT CLUB) to outright lying to the audience (CLASH OF THE DINOSAURS).
Most recently, Discovery has premiered a show titled DINOSAUR REVOLUTION, and, in my humble opinion, it's not getting NEARLY the love that it deserves.
Among the incredible pedigree of this show stands both Ricardo Delgado of AGE OF REPTILES fame, not to mention David Krentz, one of the major forces behind Disney's DINOSAUR and all-around amazing dinosaur film artist. These men are not paleontologists...they are dinosaur FANS. They want their dinosaurs to have personality and be fun to watch. Therefore, watching DINOSAUR REVOLUTION is very akin to watching a TV series based on the aforementioned graphic novel, AGE OF REPTILES. The stories are borderline anthropomorphized stories of dinosaurs living and interacting with each other in spectacular, entertaining ways (a segment about a mother Allosaurus is a joy to behold).
As a result, the show has received an unfair amount of backlash as Discovery is handling the show very poorly. Instead of presenting it as a fun dinosaur cartoon, it's trying to push the show as some new breakthrough in paleontology and shoving "facts" down our collective throats. It's painfully obvious that the show was developed early on the way Disney's DINOSAUR was intended before Michael Eisner started eating the hearts of children and he (or some other corporate big-wig) pumped the movie full of poop jokes. The intention was to make a narrative-free show and allow the viewer to simply experience the dinosaurs in all their glory with these lush characterizations and hilariously weird moments. Naturally, Discovery got cold feet late in the process and a bunch of fake scenes involving actors wandering around a cliff looking for "fossils" were added in as well as asinine voice-overs. Still, this doesn't hurt the show and if you truly enjoy the fun and spectacle of dinosaurs, you'll enjoy it.
[link]The first two episodes premiered this past weekend. The final two are next weekend. Watch them.
I now have my uverse set to record every episode