I love this column from The Hollywood Reporter, from James Hibberd's "The Live Feed", reporting on the lukewarm response to Oprah Winfrey's narrative duties on Discovery's recent BBC import mega-nature documentary series Life. I couldn't watch more than a couple of minutes...unbearable performance and why on Earth would I want to hear Oprah Winfrey on a nature documentary? Big disconnect there.
In Britain, David Attenborough. Here, Oprah Winfrey. This smells like a decision that came out of a Marketing Department -- superficial and wrong-headed, with no understanding of who would want to watch a show like that. You'd think that maybe the network might not want to totally patronize their intended viewers. Talk down to your audience much, Discovery?
I'm sure the numbers were acceptable -- haven't seen specifics -- but for goodness sakes, if you're going to buy the set, get the BBC version from Amazon; evidently the Discovery Channel store only sells the Oprah version.
Big thanks and congrats to Hibberd for writing about this!
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