BBC America to Co-Produce Five New Natural History Series

BBC America today announced five new natural history co-productions including the landmark series The Hunt, from multiple Emmy award-winning producer Alastair Fothergill, and One Planet, from Emmy award-winning producer Vanessa Berlowitz.

The Hunt uses character driven stories to take a fresh look at the most dramatic behavior in nature - the competition between predators and their prey. One Planet takes viewers on spellbinding adventures across the Earth deploying new film making techniques to explore environments through the eyes of the creatures that live there. In addition, the channel will co-produce new ambitious BBC Natural History Unit programs Wild Alaska, Beyond Human and 24 Hours on Earth. All five titles are distributed globally by BBC Worldwide.

Perry Simon, General Manager, BBC America said: "We are thrilled to add an ambitious new dimension to BBC AMERICA's programming line-up by co-producing landmark natural history programming from some of the world's greatest producers. The BBC Natural History Unit has transformed non-fiction programming and established itself as a worldwide center of excellence. No other organization in the world has such a rich heritage, deep archive and expertise in this field."

Richard De Croce, SVP Programming, BBC America added: "BBC AMERICA is the home of many iconic British shows and the addition of these landmark Natural History programs further establishes us at the vanguard of truly outstanding programming. Alastair Fothergill is the Steven Spielberg of natural history programming, an innovator with truly remarkable credits including Planet Earth, Blue Planet and Frozen Planet. Vanessa Berlowitz is an equally talented award-winning storyteller with more than 20 productions to her name and natural history running through her veins. We are honored to be working with these world-class talents."

The news comes as BBC Worldwide, BBC AMERICA's parent company, announced a major new investment in ambitious factual content from the BBC and becoming the principal co-producer with the BBC's Natural History Unit. In the future, the BBC and BBC Worldwide will work with a wide range of co-production partners, producing more hours of BBC factual content than ever before that will reach hundreds of millions of viewers around the world on multiple platforms.

THE HUNT
Silverback Films
7x60, BBC/BBC AMERICA co-production, Executive Producer Alastair Fothergill
Across the globe, predators face unique challenges wherever they live, and these different challenges drive the narrative of each episode. Using character driven stories, the series will reveal the clever and complex strategies predators use to catch their prey, showing us how these are some of the hardest working animals in the natural world. It takes a new look at the state of our environment through the eyes of some of the planet's top predators: polar bears have been filmed hunting bearded seals for the very first time using a fascinating aquatic stalking technique; golden eagles and wolves working together to Capture mountain lambs high in the Rocky mountains; and a totally breathtaking hunt where a pack of killer whales finally run down a humpbacked whale calf after a two hour chase.

ONE PLANET
BBC Natural History Unit
6x60, BBC/BBC AMERICA co-production, Executive Producer Vanessa Berlowitz
From mountains to deserts, islands to cities, each episode selects the most spectacular scenes and stories from around the globe to create the ultimate tour of an iconic ecosystem. During these immersive journeys of discovery, viewers encounter the mighty forces that govern the rules of life in each arena and witness the remarkable ways animals adapt to these rules in order to ensure their survival and the next generation. Using groundbreaking film making techniques to explore the environment through the eyes of the creatures that live there, viewers experience what it takes and how it feels to survive and triumph in the world's wildest places.

WILD ALASKA
BBC Natural History Unit
3x50, BBC/BBC AMERICA co-production, Executive Producer James Honeyborne
Alaska is wild, beautiful and brutal. A monstrous landmass of Epic proportion, it's barely inhabited by humans, except for the brave and resourceful. It is a world where it is Nature who still reigns. A place rich with wildlife, from the wolves of the interior plains to the orcas of the coastal shelf. But here even the animals must be tough to survive in a place that gives nothing for free. The unique combination of forces that forged the landscape, still dominate it. It has volcanic fire at one end and polar ice at the other. Giant earthquakes and unpredictable volcanoes - the dramatic natural forces that formed a monumental mountain range that dominates the central spine of the state - are still in force today. But as fire has forged the land - it is ice that carves its shape.

BEYOND HUMAN
BBC Natural History Unit
3x60, BBC/BBC AMERICA co-production, Executive Producer Tim Martin
Prepare to enter the extraordinary world of animal sense...a world where it's possible to see with heat, to hear across oceans, taste your way out of danger, smell through your skin, and where Touch becomes a ruthless hunting tool - yet, this isn't science fiction. The team takes viewers on a journey into the Supernatural, strange and wonderful world of animal senses. Using stunts, cutting edge technology and CGO, the series immerses viewers in this incredible sensory world.

24 HOURS ON EARTH
BBC Natural History Unit
2x50, BBC/BBC AMERICA co-production, Executive Producer James Honeyborne
In this Epic spectacular, the producers use a brand new approach to delve deep into the natural world and explore its most critical dimension - time. 24 Hours on Earth travels moment by moment through a virtual day and celebrates the most extraordinary and spectacular examples of how animals and plants are adapted to exploit specific moments in the all-encompassing 24-hour cycle. The series features returnable characters that show the huge highs and desperate lows they face across a single day in the wild. It celebrates the most extraordinary and mind-blowing adaptations that life uses to exploit tiny windows of time.

BBC AMERICA delivers U.S. audiences high-quality, innovative and intelligent programming. Established in 1998, it has been the launch pad for talent embraced by American mainstream pop culture, including Ricky Gervais, Gordon Ramsay, Graham Norton, and successful programming formats including ground-breaking non-scripted television like Top Gear and top-rated science-fiction like Doctor Who. Owned by BBC Worldwide, the commercial arm of the BBC, BBC America has attracted both critical acclaim and major awards including two Emmy Awards, five Golden Globes and eleven Peabody Awards. The channel attracts one of cable's most affluent and educated audiences and is available on cable and satellite TV in more than 80 million homes. It broadcasts in both standard and high-definition, with content available On Demand across all major digital platforms. Online, www.bbcamerica.com is the place to go to dig deeper into pop culture with a British twist. Find out more by visiting www.press.bbcamerica.com or follow us on www.twitter.com/bbcamerica.

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