Frogs that freeze solid overnight in the Andes and then reanimate by day. Rockhopper penguins in Patagonia that scale a wall of stone “free solo.” In Appalachia, fireflies that illuminate a forest in unison.
These are just a few of the wonders captured in The Americas, the Emmy-contending 11-part nature series from Universal Television Alternative Studio and NBC. Tom Hanks narrates this examination of the astonishing variety of life on a supercontinent stretching from northern Canada to the bottom of South America.
“We wanted to tell a story that was an adventure,” executive producer Mike Gunton explained as he appeared at Deadline’s Contenders TV: Documentary, Unscripted & Variety event. “I wanted it to feel like a safari, a fun safari. So if you were to go to the very best places you could ever go on this massive supercontinent, where would they be and who would be your guide? Tom Hanks. But if you go on a safari, you want to have the serious things. You want to have the scary things, you want to have the dramatic things, but you also want to have that playful side of things.”
Gunton’s extensive credits include Prehistoric Planet Seasons 1 and 2, Planet Earth II and Planet Earth III. He knows how to engage an audience with the inherent drama of the animal world.
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“My own approach has always been to try and focus on individual character stories,” Gunton said. “So you don’t tell a [general] story about lions or about blue-footed boobies. You tell the story about a pair or an individual who’s struggling with a task, almost like a hero’s journey for each of these creatures. And one of the things that that does is I think it makes it connectable. Part of the entertainment of watching this is you see in these animals’ lives your life reflected and vice versa.”
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The Americas has been a major hit for NBC, becoming “the most-watched nature documentary on linear television in more than 15 years.” It doesn’t hurt the odds of success when you can draw on the talents of a two-time Oscar winner as your narrator.
“[Hanks is] an absolutely delightful bloke and did such a good job, brought all sorts of his own skills and personality to it,” Gunton observed. “Some of the little asides, we wanted some of those slight fourth-wall-breaking moments — not too much but just occasionally pointing up the kind of humanity of some of the things you saw. And I think he did that really, really well.”
Before agreeing to join the project, Hanks watched a rough assembly of an episode. “What was really wonderful,” Gunton recalled, “is at the very end of showing him this cut, he turned and said, ‘I was born to narrate this.’ “
Check back Monday for the panel video.