david attenborough's 100th birthday marked with three special programmes and live Royal Albert Hall event
The public broadcaster will mark david attenborough's centenary on 8 May (ET) with a week of special programming, including three newly produced shows, a five‑part gardens series and a live concert celebration at the Royal Albert Hall. The schedule mixes fresh work with curated highlights from the presenter's most iconic series.
New films revisit landmark projects and the making of Life on Earth
The centrepiece special Making Life on Earth: Attenborough's Greatest Adventure goes behind the scenes of the 1979 landmark series Life on Earth. That original run saw the presenter travel to around 40 countries to film roughly 600 species; the new programme reunites him and members of the original production team for fresh interviews and reflection. It does not shy away from the hazards encountered during filming — teams faced a coup in the Comoros, came under gunfire, and endured tense moments such as the now‑famous encounter with gorillas in Rwanda — material that the new film uses to chart both the technical and personal challenges of fieldwork in the late 1970s.
Alongside this retrospective, the new output will place the presenter's early trailblazing work in context, showing how ambitions and methods have changed while underlining the continuity of his voice in natural‑history storytelling.
Secret Garden: a five‑part look at Britain's backyard biodiversity
One of the new commissions is Secret Garden, a five‑episode series filmed across the UK that explores the hidden worlds living in ordinary gardens. Each episode captures the rich diversity of life thriving in back yards and small urban green spaces, and the series frames those discoveries with practical suggestions for how the public can act to help struggling species. The approach aims to make conservation feel immediate and achievable, moving from wonder to engagement by showing how small changes at household level can support broader biodiversity.
Live centenary event, classic revisits and a curated collection
The centenary week will culminate in David Attenborough's 100 Years on Planet Earth, a live event staged at the Royal Albert Hall featuring a Concert Orchestra and a line‑up of special guests. The evening is billed as both celebration and reflection, pairing live music with recorded highlights and contemporary commentary.
Broadcasters will also re‑air episodes from many of the presenter's best‑known series, including Planet Earth, One Planet, Blue Planet and Frozen Planet, alongside his most recent special Wild London. A dedicated collection of 40 of his most‑loved programmes will be assembled for streaming on the broadcaster's service, offering viewers an easy way to revisit milestone moments from across a six‑decade career.
On the broadcaster's decision to mark the occasion, the head of commissioning for specialist factual described the week as a moment to thank the presenter for a lifetime bringing the natural world into homes, and said his programmes have both defined natural‑history broadcasting and reshaped how audiences see the planet and their place on it.
The planned broadcasts and events aim to marry nostalgia with urgency: looking back at extraordinary filmmaking achievements while using the centenary spotlight to renew public interest in species, habitats and everyday conservation.
