Although North and South America are often thought of as separate continents, thanks to the Isthmus of Panama, the two landmasses are actually one massive supercontinent that reaches from the Canadian Arctic to the fjords of Patagonia. In keeping with their massive size, the Americas are home to a stunning level of biodiversity; each of the world’s 12 major biomes can be found somewhere on the continent, with unique plant and animal species to match.
This abundance of wildlife is the subject of the new nature docuseries The Americas on NBC, narrated by Tom Hanks and airing Sundays at 8/7c. Each of the series’ ten episodes introduces viewers to the animal inhabitants of a different subregion of the supercontinent, from the Atacama Desert to the suburbs of the eastern US. Below, documentarian Mike Gunton, the show’s executive producer, joins us to discuss his experience encountering the Americas as a Brit, and the ways travel and nature interact in a changing world.
The Americas are a huge and diverse landmass. What inspired you to take it on as a single project?
Well, in a way you’ve answered the question. I wanted to make something about this amazingly diverse area that nobody really considers as a whole. When I finished making Planet Earth II, and I was making another series, Dynasties, which tells long stories about individual animals, I was thinking “How can I combine these two approaches?” We wanted to create something on the scale of Planet Earth but that told real character stories. And I thought, well, Africa could be a good place to focus on, but that’s been covered quite a bit. And North America, well, that’s definitely been done. I was considering focusing on South America but then I thought, hold on a minute, if you’re an animal, North America, Central America, and South America are all joined. Animals don’t think about borders or countries or political entities. So has anybody ever thought about looking at it as one massive continuum? So I brought the idea to NBC and said, “The title will be The Americas”. And they said “The Americas? Well, we’re NBC. We’re the voice of the Americas.” It was done and dusted there.
Because we had this big national audience, we wanted to do something that felt less of an encyclopedic discussion and rather something that felt like a privileged hot spot. Imagine if you could take the ultimate Safari that encompassed a land that has its fingertips right up in the Arctic and its toes down in Antarctica, and crosses two oceans, the equator, the tropics. What would you do? Where would you go? How would you do it? And that was really the premise. We would find these 10 quintessential, ultimate locations that defined this supercontinent. Each episode would visit that place and you’d understand why it is the way it is. What’s its personality, what is history? What’s its geography, its geology, its weather, its climate, and most importantly, what wildlife lives there? How do they cope with the challenges that their home throws at them? If you’re going to do that ultimate safari, you’ll need a fantastic guide. So we got the best guide you could imagine, Tom Hanks.
