Walking With Cavemen

This third installment in the BBC’s amazingly lifelike recreations of the ancient world doesn’t live up to the high standard set by its predecessors, Walking With Dinosaurs and Walking With Prehistoric Beasts, which combined cutting-edge paleontology and computer graphics to stunning effect. Which is a pity, because the story it has to tell is uniquely compelling—how a bunch of scrawny, hairy chimp-like creatures could have grown up into the planet-dominating sophisticates we are today, with our SUVs and televised sitcoms and Miracle Whip. We begin with Lucy the Australopithecus, anthropology’s most famous find and part of the group that first walked upright, showing that the first step in being human is learning to stand up for yourself. Cavemen is choppier than earlier installments and lurches confusingly through time, trying to structure the narrative around the evolution of each human trait rather than a simpler chronological progression of species. On the plus side, the makeup and acting is terrific; each species of protohuman has its own unique character, and it’s surprising to discover from the supplementary video that the same dozen-odd actors have been playing all the roles.