Americans can't make good docs. Most of the time they underestimate the audience and dumb down the content. And they always feel like they're somehow competing with "real films", so they play it up like there's supposed to be ACTION and INTENSITY while... doing an interview or filming a bug or whatever.

Wolves spotted? Better identify the alpha even though that isn't the current science! Can't have people thinking that pack dynamics are just an extended family cooperating and sharing territory and resources, gotta reinforce the idea that wolves fight for dominance in the wild!

Other pack animal spotted? Better identify the alpha even though that term was never meant to apply to this species!

The only good nature shows are produced by the BBC, which is generally good outside of news.

But how would we pretend that capitalism is human nature if peoples know that cooperation is just as natural if not more than competition!?!!

I only watch Meerkat Manor

"Look at this centipede from the Devonian, but invertebrates wouldn't be the ones win the game of survival" WHAT DO YOU MEAN? WHAT GAME? INVERTS ARE STILL HERE, THEY'RE THE MOST COMMON AND THRIVING LIFEFORM ON THE PLANET.

Bonies think they rule the world when the entire ecosystem would collapse if invertebrates disappear.

Owls, a naturally contrarian avian, hoot loudly when they see something that displeases them

Its always the neo-Malthusian competition and pseudo-morality nonsense rather than adaptation and survival. Anyway, conservationism in the US had its origins in racist huntsmen who blamed natives and the poor for species going extinct rather than their own bourgeois failson and industrial practice (greatest example is the buffalo), so not surprised.

Thinking about documentaries, all the in the future documentaries are really super lib, worst one that comes to mind is Earth 2100, its so US and bourgeois centric even when it came out it was breathtakingly bad. My favorite is the end where the narrator protagonist flips out her grandson won't ever see an opera like we're back in Balzac's time and that's the highpoint of the arts, society and culture.

I like documentaries in general but the quality has dipped a lot over time

There is a vast difference in american documentaries to those made in Europe, same could be said about tv in general.

Not that I watch much tv now, I haven't watched in over a decade

Nature documentaries at least entertain my cat, so there's some value.

Reminds me of a Sam Kriss quote (not linking the source because he's a sex pest and I don't want to give him clicks):

Every irrational social order has declared itself to be in some way isomorphic with reality itself. Once, the cosmos was etched into concentric spheres with God in the middle, a macrocosmic representation of feudalism. Now, geneticists like Dawkins argue that what we see as animal life is really just a capitalist free market in genetic code.

Best nature doc I’ve ever seen was this one by CGTN. China has some incredible wildlife, and CGTN doesn’t force in some weird ass perspective.
That said, I love to watch the goofy alien/UFO/conspiracy docs from history channel or worse. They’re just so stupid hahaha

Yeah life on our planet was really bad for a lot of different reasons.

I'd cleanse my pallet with the mosasaur spa scene from Prehistoric Planet.