Apple’s Prehistoric Planet starts with the very best kind of dinosaurs

polygon.com:

Our planet’s oceans may or may not be the actual “final frontier,” but they were once home to the best dinosaurs Earth had to offer. Anyone who has seen a Jurassic Park movie or Mesozoic “documentaries” like Walking with Dinosaurs knows this; put simply, underwater dinosaurs absolutely rip.

Perhaps this is why Apple TV Plus’ new Prehistoric Planet show starts with the GOATs in “Coasts,” its first episode. The latest docuseries to merge state-of-the-art CGI (pulling in talents who worked on projects like 2019’s The Lion Kingand The Book of Boba Fett) with scenic habitats is here to create a photorealistic exploration of life on and under the water 66 million years ago, give or take.

In this Cretaceous period, life was simple and ruled by dinosaurs. And who better to represent the majesty of the species than the oceanic dinosaurs, as narrated by the great Sir David Attenborough himself? The star of such episodes (and the epic Jurassic World Sea World jump) is Mosasaurus, among the largest marine animals of all time. But there’s all kinds of fun here, including Tuarangisaurus, which evokes a nightmarish Loch Ness monster with its goony, sharp-toothed grin.

The beauty of such undersea creatures is the fact that they kick ass in almost every respect. They are massive, fluid, and near unmanageable. Anytime Sir Attenborough mentions that the area we’re watching is “home to oceanic predators,” you know you’re in for a good time, though you never quite know how. With the physics and scale being so different for these creatures, the rules as we know them for moments like these feel inadequate.

Giant lizards open their mouths for a baby fish only for Prehistoric Planet to set up a lesson we’d never see coming (real Hoffman’s