It’s the fur. That’s long been Hollywood’s biggest stumbling block when it comes to delivering convincing visual effects. Whether it’s ILM or Wētā at the helm, digital fur has historically been maddeningly difficult to crack. Now, Apple TV has finally solved CGI’s hairiest problem with the latest season of its best nature docuseries. Ancient hair has truly never looked so good.
“Prehistoric Planet: Ice Age” is the greatest doc I’ve seen since the BBC’s sensational “Blue Planet 2,” which first hit screens back in 2017. Apple TV’s newest effects-fueled epic features some of the most gobsmacking CGI I’ve ever clapped eyes on.
The pedigree going into this mammoth-heavy, five-part season was never in doubt. There’s simply too much talent involved behind the scenes for Apple’s go-to dinosaur/extinct-creature showcase to falter heading into its third, potentially trilogy-capping chapter.
As with the first two seasons, “Prehistoric Planet” remains a joint venture between Apple TV and the peerless BBC Studios Natural History Unit. It certainly doesn’t hurt that one of the most elite effects-minded filmmakers in Tinseltown, Jon Favreau, is still heavily involved as an executive producer. And, of course, a certain Hans Zimmer continues to deliver the goosebump-inducing music you’d expect from the composer behind “Inception” and “The Lion King.”
Though it may no longer boast the undisputed GOAT of natural history narration, “Prehistoric Planet: Ice Age” deftly compensates for the absence of David Attenborough with the supreme quality of both its visuals and its script.
And when Britain’s most enduring national treasure eventually leaves us — hopefully at the sprightly age of 137 — I can think of no finer successor than Tom Hiddleston. The “Loki” actor is absolutely stellar on narration duties throughout this Ice Age odyssey.
Ice, ice baby
I can honestly say “Prehistoric Planet: Ice Age” is my TV event of 2025. I don’t make that statement lightly in a year that’s delivered the one-shot, head-spinning delights of “The Studio,” the equal parts upsetting and side-splitting “Pluribus” and the almost incomparable “Andor” season 2.
Such is the quality on display here that I blitzed all five episodes in one go. As someone whose short attention span often requires him to do two things at once while binge-watching (even the best Apple TV Plus shows), that’s no small feat.
The journey through the most recent Ice Age is effortlessly fascinating. And yes, I do mean “recent.” This docuseries technically covers what experts classify as the Cenozoic Ice Age (or Pleistocene epoch). It turns out our planet endured five or so major periods of global glaciation before the iconic woolly mammoth era.
Short of humankind pulling off “Jurassic Park”-level scientific voodoo with elephants and frozen DNA, I doubt I’ll ever see a more convincing digital recreation of Dumbo’s shaggy ancestors than the ones that just bewitched me. In a series full of eye-rubbing visual moments, the mammoths in “Prehistoric Planet: Ice Age” truly take the hypothermic cake.
The opening episode, “Big Freeze,” is a captivating piece of television that tracks a mammoth herd’s desperate fight to survive temperatures that barely seem survivable. When these Ice Age icons aren’t on screen, the episode also fills you in on what adorable ground sloths, cave lions and cave bears were up to. In the case of the latter two species, it turns out … mostly trying to eat each other.
Mammoth achievement
Across all five episodes, what makes “Prehistoric Planet: Ice Age” so uniquely special is the almost unfailingly believable quality of its effects. This is photorealism redefined. If you’d asked me before this what the most impressive CGI of the last 30-odd years was, I’d probably have gingerly pointed to the prologue of the hugely uneven “Jurassic World: Dominion.” Not anymore.
As you get to know these Ice Age goliaths and Cenozoic creatures, the Apple TV/BBC tag team keeps one-upping itself. The production values are so startlingly high that — aside from a few shots where I had minor lighting quibbles — I couldn’t find a single real fault. The mammoths make an impeccable first impression. Remarkably, some of the shots that come later are even more convincing. A few moments from this third season of Apple’s latest technical wonder will stay with me for a long time. Let me run you through them:
There’s a saber-tooth cat sequence involving what I presume is a real zebra, and I legitimately cannot tell where reality ends and CG begins. The episode featuring the colossal Gigantopithecus shows why Favreau was the perfect filmmaker to tackle 2016’s live-action “Jungle Book.” And both the close-up and wide shots of Elephant Birds are so seamless, I can’t tell whether the team used pure digital wizardry or some blend of animatronics and CGI.
Of moose and men
My undisputed favorite moment, both visually and narratively, appears in the season-closing “The Big Melt.” Here, we meet the largest deer ever to walk the Earth: the resplendent Megaloceros giganteus. This herbivore hulk makes a moose look like a mouse, and there’s a sequence where it interacts within real-world, non-CGI environments (as much of the show does), grazing beside actual deer. Much like the Smilodon-versus-zebra moment, it’s incredibly difficult at a glance to distinguish what’s real from what’s not.
For context about all this gushing, it’s worth noting: I’m a child of “Jurassic Park.” I saw Spielberg’s box office-smashing masterpiece on June 18, 1993. All these years later, that moment of seeing the groundbreaking dinosaur spectacle for the first time remains a high watermark of my life. Ever since, my standards for great CGI have stayed skyscraper-high.
“Prehistoric Planet: Ice Age” meets those standards like few shows or films of the last three decades. If you love nature-focused docuseries, have ever dreamed of swapping your tabby for a saber-tooth tiger, or own one of the best TVs, Apple’s majestic mammoth fest is essential viewing.
Come for the fur, stay for the bewitching Ice Age spectacle.
Stream “Prehistoric Planet: Ice Age” on Apple TV
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