Mumbai: Charlotte Moore, BBC Director of Content, has today unveiled a series of landmark natural history programmes to take the BBC’s natural history offer into the next decade.
There will be five new series in the globally renowned Planet strand, which have proved hugely popular with audiences. These landmark series will help audiences everywhere to better understand the greatest issues affecting our planet and our relationship with the natural world. They demonstrate the BBC’s unique commitment to natural history programming of the highest quality.
- One Planet: Seven Worlds will showcase the seven extraordinary continents created when incredible forces ripped apart the Earth’s crust millions of years ago. This seven part series, presented by Sir David Attenborough, will reveal how each distinct continent has shaped the unique animal life found there. It will broadcast later this year.
- Green Planet will be the first immersive portrayal of an unseen, interconnected world, full of remarkable new behaviour, emotional stories and surprising heroes in the plant world. This is Planet Earth from the perspective of plants. It will broadcast in 2021.
- Perfect Planet will be a unique fusion of blue chip natural history and earth sciences explaining how the living planet operates. This five part series will show how the forces of nature – weather, ocean currents, solar energy and volcanoes – drive, shape and support Earth’s great diversity of life. It will broadcast in 2020.
- Frozen Planet II will take audiences back to the wildernesses of the Arctic and Antarctica. Ten years on from the original Frozen Planet, this series tells the complete story of the entire frozen quarter of our planet that’s locked in ice and blanketed in snow. It will broadcast in 2021.
- Planet Earth IIIwill be the most ambitious natural history landmark ever undertaken by the BBC. Combining the awe and wonder of the original Planet Earth, the new science and discoveries of Blue Planet II and Planet Earth II, and the immersive character-led storytelling of Dynasties, the series will take the ‘Planet Earth’ experience to new heights. It will broadcast in 2022.
Since the launch of Planet Earth in 2006, the BBC Planet titles have become a huge global hit and over a billion people have watched Planet Earth II and Blue Planet II in the last 3 years. This new five-strong slate is expected to involve over 10,000 days of filming– and will tell a truly global story.
BBC Planet sits within BBC Earth, the global factual brand for BBC Studios. The BBC Earth brand is present in over 169 countries and across multiple platforms including branded channels, digital platforms, innovative AR and VR extensions, live events, cinema and giant screen releases, publishing and ancillary products.
In Asia, the BBC Earth channel is available in Hong Kong, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam. It is available as a block in Japan on WOWOW, and as joint-venture channel Sony BBC Earth in India.
Charlotte Moore, BBC Director of Content said: “The BBC is world famous for its natural history programming and these new series will raise the bar even higher. We know that audiences want shows that bring them the richest narratives, the best camerawork and the highest quality production values and they look to us to deliver this.
Viewers around the globe have been captivated by the incredible stories that the Planets series have told and now new technology allow us to explore even more of the natural world than ever before. These new series will look in depth at specific aspects of the natural world, giving revealing and sometimes surprising insights to animals and the habitats they live in. It’s our biggest ever commitment to natural history and one we are proud of.”
Tom McDonald, Head of Commissioning, Natural History and Specialist Factual, said: “Planet Earth II, Blue Planet II and most recently Dynasties reinvented landmark Natural History at BBC – delivering record breaking global audiences & receiving awards around the world. These new titles reveal the scale of our ambitions in Natural History – with a rich and innovative pipeline of titles up to 2022: the biggest commitment we have ever made in the genre.
I am also delighted to be bringing the long awaited Frozen Planet back to our screens a decade after the first series was on air, and of course thrilled that Planet Earth will be back in the BBC’s centenary year. Both will continue our pledge to reveal not just the world’s greatest wonders and animal behaviour but reflect the very real challenges the natural world faces.”
