During the course of the series presenter David Attenborough, following the format established by Kenneth Clark's "Civilisation" and Jacob Bronowski's "The Ascent of Man" (both series which he designed and produced as director of BBC2), travels the globe in order to trace the story of the evolution of life on the planet. Like the earlier series, it was divided into 13 programmes (each of around 55 minutes' duration). The executive producer was Christopher Parsons and the music was composed by Edward Williams.