How to Live on Earth: A Review from the Bottom Up
Every great journey, the old stories tell us, ends where it began. The traveller crosses deserts and oceans, chasing a treasure that was buried beneath his own sleeping place all along. He simply had to go far enough away to see it.
We thought of that story last week, curled up on the couch at River Valley Farm with a dog on our feet and a new documentary on the screen. How to Live on Earth takes us around the planet in 96 minutes, from Chinese pear orchards to Mexican rainforests. And by the end, we found ourselves looking straight back at our own little valley.
The universe, it seems, has a sense of humour. Sometimes the answer to “how do we live on Earth?” is waiting at the bottom of the garden, behind a wooden door.
The Film
How to Live on Earth is a feature documentary presented by Benedict Cumberbatch, and you can watch it free on YouTube. It premiered there worldwide on 20 September 2026, after a cinema run in the UK.
It comes with serious credentials. Director Fredi Devas worked on Planet Earth II and III. Co-director Jonnie Hughes made David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet. Hans Zimmer is among the composers, so yes, the music swells exactly when you expect it to.
Cumberbatch hosts from London’s Natural History Museum, cycling and striding between the exhibits. From there, the film travels to a field biologist in Mexico’s Calakmul forest, former White House chef Sam Kass on the future of food, and young climate activist Xiye Bastida in New York. It bills itself, rather boldly, as the ultimate “how-to” video.
What It Gets Right
The best thing about this film is that it refuses to make you despair. Most environmental documentaries leave you staring at the wall, wondering whether to bother recycling the yoghurt tub. This one sends you outside to plant something.
Its big idea is simple: everything on Earth is connected, and when we work with nature instead of against it, nature works for us. One memorable scene shows a vast pear orchard in China where the bees have vanished, so people now climb the trees to pollinate the blossoms by hand. It is beautiful and absurd at the same time. The film’s answer is not cleverer brushes. It is to make the land welcoming enough for the pollinators to come home.
There is also a lovely visit to a forest healing instructor in South Korea, who uses the woods as therapy. Anyone who has walked the Outeniqua foothills on a misty morning will not need convincing. And the film’s slogan, “green is the new gold”, is one we would happily paint on the side of a toilet.
Is it perfect? Not quite. Some critics found the tone a little like a school lesson, and the music does tell you when to feel hopeful. But honestly, a little hope with a loud soundtrack is better than a lot of gloom in silence.
The Chapter They Left Out
The film talks about forests, food, bees and cities. It talks about the cycles that keep a planet alive. But there is one cycle it walks right past, and it happens in every home, several times a day.
We eat food grown in soil. Our bodies take what they need. And then, in most of the world, we flush the rest away with litres of clean drinking water, sending precious nutrients out to sea. In a water-scarce country like South Africa, that is a strange habit for a species that calls itself the planet’s steward.
A compost toilet closes the loop. No water leaves the house. The urine is separated and can feed trees. The solids, with a cup of sawdust and a few red wrigglers, become rich compost within about a year. The soil gives us food, and we give the soil something back. That is working with nature, not against it, in the most down-to-earth way imaginable.
The film asks how we can live on Earth. We would gently add a smaller question: how do we go to the loo on Earth? Like the traveller in the old story, we may find the answer was never far away. It was right there, under the seat.
Watch It, Then Come and Visit
Our verdict: four out of five. Make some tea, gather the family, and watch it free on YouTube this weekend. It is the kind of film that makes children ask good questions, and adults run out of easy answers.
Then, if you want to see one small piece of “how to live on Earth” in action, come and visit us at River Valley Farm. We will show you the toilets, the compost and the moths, and we promise the only thing you will smell is fynbos.
When you want something badly enough, they say, the whole universe conspires to help you. We like to think it starts with the soil.
