Coming to this NBC nature series after a couple of decades of binging exclusively on BBC and Disney wildlife fare, a couple of things quickly became obvious: the photography is phenomenal, but the content is oddly bland and uninspired. That’s at least partly due to the setting dictated by the title, with multiple episodes focused on areas of our country and Mexico populated by critters we see all the time, eliminating much opportunity for American wonder.
Buy The Americas: Complete Limited SeriesEven within those narrow regional confines, the choices for featured animals are rather lackluster and tired, including segments on monarch butterflies (yawn), coyotes (I can just look out my window), and raccoons in Central Park (come on now). Ranging further afield, we track usual suspects including penguins, turtles, hummingbirds, and polar bears. It’s as if the producers asked AI to produce a list of the most well-known animals located in the Americas and then sent their cameramen out to shoot them. I’m most invested when learning about rarely seen animals, so a segment filmed in massive underground cave pools was one of my highlights.
The sense of editorial blandness continues with the limp writing, with little of the life-or-death thrills or environmental messaging found in BBC’s sterling solo productions. The BBC co-produced this series, mostly as cameras for hire, but NBC funded it and apparently steered its direction. Sure, BBC legend David Attenborough can feel preachy with his constant harping about disappearing animal habitats due to our actions, but at least he has a message. Here, Tom Hanks is hired to deliver limp scripted commentary on the animal antics we’ve likely all seen many times before, a calming voice offering little more than prestige.
The writers don’t make much effort to cobble together exciting storylines from the footage, and it’s all kept oddly toothless, with much less violence than BBC and Disney animal projects. We see predators hunting for prey, but they miss their targets most of the time. As an introductory nature series for a young viewer, it’s absolutely golden, but for anyone versed in the wider, wilder world of nature programming, it’s mostly notable for its awe-inspiring photography of subjects we’ve mostly seen before.
Filmed over five years across over 180 expeditions, the epic photography is the biggest selling point of the series. Raising the modern-age bar first firmly placed by Planet Earth, whose producers return here, the show takes us so close to the action it threatens to leave the confines of the screen. Thrilling aerial views and time-lapse photography of seasonal changes combine with impeccably scouted filming locations to offer the most gorgeous representations of its subjects ever captured on film. While we’ve seen most of these animal friends before, they just got a serious glow-up.
Since the series is just 11 episodes, it fits comfortably on two discs housed in a standard slim Blu-ray case. The final episode is a lavishly produced documentary on the making of the series, negating the need for any other bonus features. The series has also been released on 4K UHD discs, which is the optimal format to fully savor the incredible photography, but the Blu’s 1080p hi-def is an acceptable choice as well, with the colors and detail still pleasingly robust. Sound is formatted in DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1, offering a good sense of the ambient nature but mostly utilized to emphasize Hans Zimmer’s majestic score and the soothing narration by Tom Hanks.
