Walking with Prehistoric Beast is sometimes overlooked by its most famous predecessor, but that is a great mistake. To start the stories here are more complex from the Walking with Dinosaurs and that is reasonable, if you think that mammals have more evolved brains. Anyway the location we see here is a bit creepy because many of the places that the events of the series take place are either for the most part the same or they have changed dramatically in geologically speaking (less than 65 million years ago).Also some the majority of the extinct creatures that are presented still have descenders in the modern-day and I remember felling amazed by that fact. A bonus fact is that the graphic due to the improvement of the technology from 1999 are extreme realistic and in all honest look better than Walking with Dinosaurs. In summary it is a sequel ( OK of documentary in this case) done right, so go watch it all six episodes, it is about 3 hours and after you will want to see them again.

The idea of "Walking with Beasts" was to close part of the gap between the end of "Walking with Dinosaurs" (ending in the late Cretaceous) and today.The story begins in the early Eocene (~55 million years ago). Why the Paleozoic (the 10 million years between the Cretaceous and the Eocene) have been left out I don't know. This was also a quite exciting time in Earth's history, just after the fall of the dinosaurs.The series give a nice overlook of the animals that lived during the specified time. These are just short windows however, sometimes just single days within an epoch, which doesn't give much insight into the development of animals.The amount of speculation in this series seems to be even greater than in "Walking with Dinosaurs". While we still don't know if the animals of the Eocene were single-coloured, or had spots or stars or stripes, most animals in this series had very distinct markings on their fur or feathers. But this goes even further with information about social behavior among early primates and tales of gases trapped within the local pond. These things all MIGHT have been, but watching the series gives you the impression that someone went back in time to study these animals (for a few years).There are a few animals that have left us not only bones, but also fur and dung, like the mammoth, some sabre toothed cats and the giant ground sloth (megatherium). These creatures were recreated wonderfully.This is another edutainment documentation from the BBC where the emphasis was put a little to much on the entertainment side. Just the same, it's not really bad (just not as good as "Life on Earth" was for example), a lot of fun to watch and it also contains a nice insight into the world of mammals.

Considering how many dinosaur documentaries have been made it is good to see the BBC filling the 65 Million year gap since the end of those big lizards.Each episode is made in the form of a story as we follow a particular animal or group in its fight for survival. The science and behaviour of the animals is introduced as it intersects with the story.I don't agree with one poster who commented that too much of the documentary is speculation. In fact if you check the BBC website, you can see that all claims are based on some evidence. Clearly it cannot claim to be completely accurate, and some compromises must be made. Many things, such as the colours and markings of the animals have to be guessed. However even then there are plenty of cases where there is good evidence such as cave paintings and fossilised skin. This includes Megaloceros and the Mammoth. We know so much more about mammals than dinosaurs that educated guesses about can be made using our knowledge of the appearance and behaviour of modern animals.In most case the computer based rendering of the animals is utterly convincing. The filmmakers went to considerable trouble to integrate real locations with computer rendered animals. Real scenes with leaves rustling, splashes in the water and footprints in the snow were filmed leaving a space for the computer generated beasts afterwards. There are some less convincing ones such as the Australopithecines, which is a pity because the origin of mankind is one of the most important points on the timeline. One minor criticism is that occasionally the animals' movements look repetitive and unnatural. This is a small flaw and doesn't get in the way of the story.Overall this is a highly enjoyable and well put together series.

This series is truly awe-inspiring, besides being entertaining and educational to boot. The CGI graphics are so good that the creatures look completely real. And to the nay-sayer below who complains that `no human ever saw these creatures … blah blah … how do we know … blah blah … its like saying Thomas The Tank Engine is the real story of the British railway … blah blah' I say this: First if all, palaeontologists can tell a whole lot from fossils – everything from an animal's size and gait, right down to what it ate. Secondly, some of these animals (mammoths, sabre-tooth cats, woolly rhinos, giant elks) WERE seen by human eyes, and indeed cave paintings have proved to be another valuable source of information about these creatures. And thirdly, some of these creatures are so closely related to modern animals that it is possible to draw fairly sensible conclusions about what their social habits must have been like just by observing their modern relatives. Of course there's inevitably going to be an element of conjecture and speculation in a production like this, but at least it is educated, sensible and logical conjecture, and it's probably not far off the truth in most cases. My minor quibbles are pretty much the same as those already aired by other reviewers: I found it incredibly naff giving the sabre-tooth cats names - `Half Tooth' and `The Brothers'. Why not just call them Brian, Clive and Trevor instead? That would have been no more or no less silly. And some fascinating and truly bizarre prehistoric animals were completely overlooked or mentioned just briefly (the ancient horses being one example). But these are minor quibbles about an otherwise superb effort by the BBC. It gets 9 out of 10 from me.