Wild China-Own it on DVD and Blu-Ray on August 5th, 2008
- Genre: Nature, Documentary
- Price: $23.99 on Amazon
- Run Time: 353 minutes
- Rated: Not Rated
- Publisher: BBC Video
- Similar To: Planet Earth
Just in the time for the Olympics, BBC Video has released the DVD set Wild China. I honestly can say that I know very little about China so this was a good crash course about life in China. Overall I thought the DVD set was average. It was very informative and has some great visuals but it was also kind of boring.
Obviously there really isn’t a whole lot to say about the plot since this is a documentary about China after all. You pretty much have your typical documentary. The documentary talks about all the regions of China and the people that live in each area. Interspersed through this are some great aerial and ground shots of the scenery and some of the scenery is gorgeous. These shots are very similar with what you would expect out of Planet Earth (not quite as nice though).
As I mentioned earlier I really didn’t know much about China. This is probably true for most people since in general a lot of people don’t know a whole lot about China. So it was good that this DVD set was very informative in my opinion. This also leads to the one problem of the whole DVD set and it is a pretty important fact. Wild China is simply boring at points. If you are not at all interested in China you will probably fall asleep while watching it. People that are really interested in China are the only people that will probably get full enjoyment out of this DVD set.
Wild China features six hour long episodes with each episode dedicated to a different part of China. The episodes include include Heart of the Dragon, Shangri-La, Tibet, Beyond the Great Wall, Land of the Panda, and the Tides of Change. There is also a featurette about the making of the documentary.
So Wild China is a pretty average documentary. It is informative and has some beautiful landscapes but it also suffers from being pretty slow which leads to some boredom. I thought it was pretty average overall. Your enjoyment of Wild China will most likely depend on how interested you are in China. if you are interested in it you should check out the DVD. If you aren’t you shouldn’t. One thing I would recommend though is that if you are going to buy the DVD set and have a Blu-Ray player I would recommend that you pick it up on Blu-Ray since at the time of writing this review the two prices are essentially the same and you are obviously going to get a much better picture on Blu-Ray than you are going to get on a normal DVD.
My Rating: 
People Interested in China: 
