Back in the early days of the broadcast networks, natural history shows were a part of the programming diet: NBC ran “Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom” for much of the 1960s, and around that time ABC brought “The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau” to U.S. audiences. Over the past several decades, however, those kinds of programs mostly became the domain of PBS (“Nature”) and cablers like Discovery (“Planet Earth”). More recently, streamers like Netflix (“Our Planet”) entered the space.
With a few exceptions (Fox’s “Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey”), the broadcast nets have shied away from documentary-style nature events — which makes NBC’s current stab at one, “The Americas,” all the more notable. “It is an experiment,” says Toby Gorman, the president of Universal Television Alternative Studio. “We will learn a lot. But when I think about the hits of broadcast, it’s got to be four quadrant,” he adds, referring to the need to hit every demographic. “We talk about that a lot in our world, and I can’t think of something that defines ‘four-quadrant’ better than a big, blue-chip natural history project.”
Narrated by Tom Hanks and boasting a score by Hans Zimmer, the 10-episode “The Americas” debuted Feb. 23 and continues weekly through April 13. Produced by BBC Studios Natural History Unit — the shingle behind epic events like “Planet Earth” — the series is split into different regions of interest, including the Amazon, Mexico, the Gulf Coast, Patagonia and the West Coast. The ambitious shoot took place over five years and 180 expeditions. Gorman believes it’s the most expensive unscripted undertaking in NBC history. So far, via its runs on NBC and Peacock, the series has reached more than 20 million viewers and is the most-watched new alternative show of the season to date.
“It was a big play for them,” says executive producer Mike Gunton, the creative director at BBC’s Natural History Unit, whose recent credits include Apple TV+’s “Prehistoric Planet.” “From our perspective, it was an opportunity to speak to an audience on a scale that we’ve never really been able to do before. The streamers and the cable networks, they’re not niche, but when you’re on a factual channel, it reaches a certain subset of audience. This is a complete, cross-genre broadcast.”
The idea for “The Americas” came as Gorman first joined NBCUniversal in 2019. Conversations were taking place about developing a big natural history event at the company — the kind that could then live on a streamer (which at that point hadn’t even been announced yet as Peacock). Coincidentally, Gunton was just starting to pitch a project about the North and South American continents, from top to bottom.
“I was thinking, is there anything that has the same ambition as ‘Planet Earth’ I could do,” he says. That’s when focusing on the Americas came to mind. “I started thinking, hold on, it’s got everything. It’s got all the superlatives. It’s got the longest river, the oldest, biggest trees, the biggest this, the fastest that.”
Gorman says they were inspired by the scope of Gunton’s pitch. “The strategy was very clear from the outset that if NBCUniversal was going to enter into this space, it needed to do it bigger and better than had been done before,” he says. “And Mike would tell you, this is the biggest thing he’s done, and he’s done a lot of big stuff. So it was just to swing for the fences, invest and hope that we not just entertain America about the Americas, but also entertain the world.”
NBC has since also ordered the eight-episode “Surviving Earth,” which uses digital technology to re-create the prehistoric era — although that series, first announced in 2022, has not yet been given an airdate (but execs confirm it’s still on the docket). Gorman hopes that “The Americas” will spawn similar projects on NBC.
“I don’t know that we will go as big as we’ve gone, because we really wanted to come out the gates strong,” he says. “A five-year production period is obviously just an incredible amount of time for any project. But we certainly are starting to talk about how would we follow this up. We would love the opportunity to do more, but it’s a large conversation because of the commitment required.”
