A grand, sweeping overview of the inhabitants of our world, Life picks up right where Planet Earth left off. It's a show that makes one happy to own a TV. And it's also narrated by Oprah!

Life originally aired on the BBC last year, but it premiered on five different channels tonight in America, and for good reason. If you did happen to catch the show, hopefully you had an HDTV to go along with it, as the clip shown on this site will not even come close to doing Life any justice visually. Simply put, it's beautiful. Sweeping aerial shots of African plains, precise and detailed extreme close-ups of a poisoned dart frog's skin, it's nothing short of a visual feast. And the animals! Oh, the animals! Just in the first episode, we see some pretty wild behaviors. Bottle-nosed dolphins creating a net of silt as a tool to catch fish, capuchin monkeys mimicking a hammer and anvil to crack nuts, and most impressive of all, the stalk-eye fly that blows air bubbles to inflate its eyes in the hopes of attracting a mate.

And while the British version that aired on BBC last year was narrated by the incomparable David Attenborough, we're going to have to make do with Oprah. Thankfully she keeps it rather subdued (with the exception of some weird sexual narration), because we were half expecting her to introduce each animal in her Oprah voice: "AND HERE'S THE PANTHER CHAMELEOOOOOOOOON!"

A combination of a brilliant concept that utilizes bleeding edge technology, tireless work, perfect execution, and the almighty Oprah gives you no reason not to watch this show.

[Life]