Attenborough's calming narration comes to Netflix in 2019 doc Our Planet

Enlarge / Coming in 2019 to a Netflix near you.

Netflix

Two of the main people behind the BBC's modern wave of nature documentary series, including their iconic narrator, have signed on to make their next documentary project with Netflix.

The soothing, British-accented tones of narrator Sir David Attenborough, along with Blue Planet and Planet Earth creator, director, and executive producer Alastair Fothergill, are the headline names for a new project, dubbed Our Planet. Netflix says this eight-part "natural history" documentary series will debut exclusively on its service on April 5, 2019.

The series includes a partnership with the World Wildlife Federation, along with statements from Attenborough about the "beauty and fragility" of our planet and the claim that humanity is "the greatest threat to the health of our home," but this all merely implies that Our Planet will heavily focus on conservation. The series' released teaser trailer instead largely resembles recent BBC docuseries—meaning, dramatic, crystal-clear shots of wildlife in its natural habitat. We'll always take more of those, and Netflix is advertising 4K-ready video content for this one.

Netflix says the series has been in production for roughly four years, which means its gestation period may have overlapped with 2016's Planet Earth II, on which Fothergill was not credited. His last BBC production credit came with the four-part 2015 miniseries The Hunt. No plans have been announced about standalone Blu-ray versions of this series (and disc versions have driven the BBC duo's past titanic successes), but Netflix does have precedent in eventually releasing some of its streaming-only content to disc media at a later date.

The last time we saw Attenborough was at this year's South by Southwest Film Festival, where the consummate narrator played host in a striking virtual reality museum, dubbed Hold the World. That app finally saw a formal launch last week, and at only $4, it's a no-brainer buy for anyone who owns an Oculus Rift (or, via the slightly awkward Revive workaround, an HTC Vive).