The 'Walking with Dinosaurs' Trailer Prepares for a Prehistoric Summer

Move over, Shark Week! The toothy terrors of the oceans have been hogging the spotlight in the public imagination for far too long, thanks to a marketing genius in Discovery Channel's group hitting upon the brilliant concept in the late 1990s. However, Discovery is now a zombie network, about to be divested and sold by Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav, who finally admitted that his grand scheme failed to make HBO viewers watch programming from The Learning Channel (where the only lesson is how much people will debase themselves on TV for fame). 

Discovery couldn't even manage to reboard Walking with Dinosaurs with the BBC for the show's 25th anniversary comeback, ceding it to public television. With shark-based programming more accessible on National Geographic via Disney+ (which can't use the trademarked phrase) rather than Discovery, it's time to retire it altogether in favor of Dinosaur Week on your local PBS station.

It's been a quarter century since the original landmark series defied critics' expectations, becoming one of the biggest shows of 1999 and drawing massive viewership in both the U.S. and the U.K. However, these past two and a half decades haven't been idle in the Dinosaur discovery department. Starting around 2008 and continuing through most of the 2010s, there was an absolute explosion of discoveries made about the many millennia when Lizards were King, including dozens of new species. With so much new ground to explore, the revived series should easily surpass its predecessor in how much knowledge it's bringing to the table.

Here's the series synopsis:

Walking With Dinosaurs will take viewers on a unique journey back through time, revealing the incredible life stories of these long-lost giants. Each episode will tell the dramatic story of an individual dinosaur whose remains are currently being unearthed by the world’s leading dinosaur hunters. Thanks to cutting-edge science, experts can reveal how these prehistoric creatures lived, hunted, fought, and died more accurately than ever before. As the dinosaur’s bones emerge from the ground, the series will bring these prehistoric stories to life with state-of-the-art visual effects — making each episode a gripping dinosaur drama based on the very latest evidence.

Across the six episodes, audiences will meet a range of spectacular dinosaur species in an array of prehistoric landscapes. These include a Spinosaurus — the largest carnivorous dinosaur to ever walk the earth — roaming the rivers of ancient Morocco; a youthful Triceratops battling a ravenous T. Rex in North America; and a lonely giant Lusotitan risking it all for a love in Portugal.

Bertie Carvel (Dalgliesh) narrates the series (both the U.S. and U.K. versions). He is the latest to try to fill the shoes of David Attenborough (who is a complete dinosaur-phile, by the way), who, at 99 years old, is finally starting to sit these things out. Thus far, the BBC has cycled through many options, including Patrick Stewart, Adjoa Andoh, Tom Hiddleston, and Idris Elba. One assumes none of them landed the job yet, so we'll be sure to check out how Carvel does.

Kirsty Wilson is the series showrunner for Walking with Dinosaurs. Directors Stephen Cooter, Tom Hewitson, and Owen Gower split helming and producing duties, with Max Brunold and Libby Hand also producing. BBC Factual commissioned the series, and the CGI was created by the international team of BBC's Science Unit Production, PBS, Germany's ZDF, and France Télévisions. Andrew Cohen and Helen Thomas executive produce with Bill Gardner & Diana El-Osta for PBS. 

Walking with Dinosaurs will premiere on most local PBS stations, the PBS app, and the PBS Documentaries Prime Video Channel on Monday, June 16, with two episodes, and will air/stream two episodes a night through Thursday, June 18, 2025. All episodes will be available for members to stream via PBS Passport on premiere day.