# The Americas (TV series)

The Americas is a 2025 NBC television documentary series narrated by Tom Hanks which highlights two of the world's continents, North America and South America. The series premiered on February 23, 2025.
NBCUniversal's promotional materials for the series refer to North and South America as a single "supercontinent" and describe the series as an "epic 10-part television event" which "takes viewers on a breathtaking journey."

## Production

According to NBC Universal, production of the series took five years and involved 180 expeditions. The BBC Studios Natural History Unit produced The Americas in association with Universal Television Alternative Studio. Describing his motivation for making the series, executive producer Mike Gunton said, "I had this idea for many years that there was one place on the planet that, for some reason, no one had ever really done a full job on, which is the whole of the Americas. It's all about the scale of the place. There is nowhere on Earth that has this range." The president of Universal Television Alternative Studio, Toby Gorman, said "It is the most expensive, unscripted project in NBC's history, as far as I know."
Drone technology played an important role in allowing the production team to film areas previously inaccessible to explorers. On several occasions the filmmakers captured creatures or animal behaviors never filmed before, including a whale's-eye view of a sperm whale diving into the deep ocean, an achievement which required a two-year effort to develop new technology to film a behavior that previously was a mystery to naturalists. The production team filmed wild Banker horses on the Outer Banks of North Carolina for three years before capturing a dramatic fight between two stallions.
While filming The Americas, the production team sought to limit its impact on the natural environment. Measures it took included tracking animals on foot, using donkeys rather than motor vehicles to transport equipment, using portable solar arrays to recharge batteries for electronic equipment, reducing travel by hiring locally whenever possible, sharing vehicles, and camping instead of staying in hotels. For these efforts, the production team earned a Gold Seal from the Environmental Media Association.
Holly Spearing of the BBC was the series Film editor. Hans Zimmer composed the original score.
An event billed as "The Americas: Worldwide Preview and Fireside Chat" took place at the Palais des Festivals et des Congrès in Cannes, France, on April 9, 2024, as part of the 2024 MIPTV Media Market. It included a preview of footage shot for the episode "The Andes" and a discussion with Gorman, Gunton, and Spearing of the series and the technology used to film it .

## Reception

Writing in The Hollywood Reporter on February 22, 2025, reviewer Daniel Fienberg described The Americas as "as safe and conventionalized a portrait of our wild world as you could ever hope to see, accompanied by the safe and conventionalized musings of pervasive narrator Tom Hanks." He found the photography "astonishing" and that Hanks narrates with his "familiar, avuncular charm." He noted that the series covers both already well-covered topics and parts of the Americas that are less chronicled, and that Hanks' narration makes a point of highlighting which sequences had never been filmed before – and that while some of those sequences were memorable, others were not. Previewing all ten episodes over the course of three days, he found that the series' coverage of animals' mating rituals and struggles to feed their young became repetitive, but added that he believed a weekly viewer would be less likely to notice this. Overall, he felt that The Americas underplays environmental issues such as climate change and deforestation of the Amazon basin, avoids politically charged calls to environmental action, and depicts nature as unrealistically cute and overly likely to have happy endings, with cute creatures surviving threats by predators three to five times per episode and viewers assured that if Hanks introduces a creature as seeking food or a mate it in the end will succeed in eating or mating. Fienberg's "bottom line" was that The Americas is "beautiful, adorable, and pretty thin," adding that "if you don't approach it looking to have your expectations or your place within the world challenged, The Americas completely delivers on the very basic things you're looking for in a wildlife series." Fienberg wrote that the series sends a message to the viewer that "everything in nature is going to be all right."
After previewing the episodes "The Atlantic Coast," "Mexico," and "The Wild West," Robert Daniels wrote on RogerEbert.com on February 20, 2025, that The Americas clearly is influenced by the natural history work of David Attenborough and "is an objectively beautiful series filled with awe-inspiring landscapes and handsomely depicted wildlife whose existence is flattened by a repetitive approach." He noted that the narration provides "scant" analysis and anthropomorphizes every animal it discusses, joking and "comparing them to archetypes of the Western genre," and that the musical score attempts to overawe viewers with feelings of "grandeur and suspense." Daniels compared the series unfavorably with Attenborough's work because it lacks Attenborough's sense of environmental urgency, instead focusing on animals' family and mating behaviors in a manner similar to a "slideshow." Daniels acknowledged that "the family viewing aspect" aspect of the series "makes such a broad crowd-pleasing approach a necessity," but for him the series felt like a "missed opportunity" after its first episode because of its almost complete lack of discussion of mankind's negative impact on animals, its failure to do more than hint at deeper environmental problems that an inquisitive viewer might want to learn more about, and its focus instead on "nature's success stories." He found the episodes "The Atlantic Coast" and "The Wild West" unremarkable, but thought the exploration of the Yucatán Peninsula's submerged underground cave system in the episode "Mexico" is "the first time there's an exciting feeling of discovery amid these overwhelmingly beautiful vistas and landscapes, filmed with an immersive clarity that reminds one of the magical planet we call home," giving the viewer "a sudden, pronounced sense of what exciting little-known sights might lie ahead in the show."
On Screen Rant, Mary Kassell wrote on February 21, 2025, that the production value of The Americas "is strong, and many of the shots are dynamic enough to make us sit up and take notice," that "[i]t's clear that the producers and camera operators were immersed in the environments they explored and cared deeply about following interesting narratives," and that each episode "feels fresh" and succeeds in differentiating itself from the others. However, she also observed that the series "doesn't bring anything new to the table through visuals or storytelling" and is too fast-paced, jumping from narrative to narrative too quickly without telling the viewer enough about an animal and its environment. In partial contrast to Daniels, Kassell thought that "[o]ne of the best parts of The Americas is that it acknowledges the impact of humans on the natural world, to a certain extent," but like Daniels she added that "The Americas only ever shares the good stuff" about animal adaptation to human encroachment on the environment, and she shared her opinion that "a nature documentary should be able to exist purely for entertainment and enjoyment, but right now...doesn't have that luxury" and that "not touching upon how much of the titular Americas have been and currently are being destroyed is irresponsible." Kassel wrote that while "Hanks is no David Attenborough" and The Americas relies primarily on its visuals for its appeal, Hanks "holds his own in The Americas." She believed that his script made too many movie references, exploiting his filmography, but thought viewers watching the series primarily because of Hanks would find the references fun. She found Zimmer's musical score "a bit too...cinematic" at times in its attempts to be "as sweeping and dramatic as possible."

## Broadcast

The Americas premiered with two episodes aired back-to-back on NBC at 7:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. Eastern Time on Sunday, February 23, 2025, and also simulcasted on E!, SYFY, Bravo, CNBC, and USA Network. The next two aired back-to-back at the same times on Sunday, March 2, and after that one episode aired at 8:00 pm. Eastern Time each Sunday from March 9 through April 13. On the day after it premiered on NBC, each episode began streaming on Peacock. A "Making of The Americas" special is scheduled to begin streaming on April 21 exclusively on Peacock and will consist of behind-the-scenes footage showing viewers how the filmmakers made spectacular shots seen in the series.

## Episodes

| No. | Title | Original release date | Prod. code | U.S. viewers (millions) | Rating (18-49) |
| 1 | "The Atlantic Coast" | February 23, 2025 (2025-2-23) | 101 | 4.67 | 0.43/6 |
| On the East Coast of the United States, a Banker horse defends his territory against an intruding stallion on the Outer Banks of North Carolina; sand tiger sharks gather among shipwrecks and interact with jacks and scad in the Graveyard of the Atlantic off the Outer Banks; a bald eagle battles with an osprey over a fish along the Chesapeake Bay; after 17 years underground, vast numbers of periodical cicadas emerge in suburban Maryland; a raccoon family lives in New York City and evades attack by a red-tailed hawk; fireflies light up an Appalachian forest on a summer night; an American black bear and her cubs look for cherries in the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee; a red oak tree in Massachusetts sheds its leaves in the autumn. ||||||
| 2 | "Mexico" | February 23, 2025 (2025-2-23) | 102 | 5.24 | 0.42/6 |
| In Mexico, saguaro cacti grow in the Sonoran Desert; a mother cactus pygmy owl nesting in a saguaro encourages her chicks to fly for the first time while protecting them from attack by snakes, including a coachwhip snake; marine life thrives in the Sea of Cortez, where a family of orcas hunts bottlenose dolphins and blue-footed boobies mate and nest on San Pedro Mártir Island; a variety of orchids grow in the mountainous jungles of southern Mexico, where a male orchid bee creates a perfume to attract mates by gathering scents from a variety of sources and competes with a rival for scent from a Stanhopea orchid; Mexican spider monkeys live in the treetops of the tropical forest of the Yucatán Peninsula; turquoise-browed motmots live around cenotes, which provide entrances to an extensive flooded subterranean cave system under the Yucatán that is home to blind cave fish, cave brittle stars, and remipedes, and where haloclines create optical illusions; jaguars hunt in the mangrove forests along the coast of the Yucatán, where local people observe the Day of the Dead holiday; monarch butterflies hibernate in the forests of central Mexico during the winter. ||||||
| 3 | "The Wild West" | March 2, 2025 (2025-3-2) | 103 | 3.71 | 0.28/3 |
| In the western United States, a coyote seeks food in Yellowstone in the Rocky Mountains of Wyoming during winter, encountering a red fox and competing with otters to catch cutthroat trout near the Grand Prismatic Spring; a prairie rattlesnake spends her pregnancy in the mountains before finally giving birth; acorn woodpeckers gather acorns in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada in California during the autumn; in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona, honeypot ants store water and nectar and raise flying ants that swarm to found new colonies, and a bobcat mother seeks water; on the Great Plains, American bison in South Dakota graze and the males fight for mates, and sandhill cranes stop in Nebraska during their annual migration to feed and mate around the Platte River. ||||||
| 4 | "The Amazon" | March 2, 2025 (2025-3-2) | 104 | 3.64 | 0.30/3 |
| In South America, the Amazon rainforest is home to jaguars, anacondas, and capybara; giant river turtles lay their eggs on a riverbank and their hatchlings must run a gauntlet of black caiman to reach the river; during annual floods piranha and pink botos swim onto the submerged floor of the rainforest while hoatzin nest overhead; giant otters hunt peacock bass in the rivers while one of their young encounters a tapir; in a search for prey, army ants swarm across the floor of the forest, where the trees generate water vapor and seed the air with chemicals to create rain; in the jungle canopy, a family of emperor tamarins seeks food and a pair of nesting harpy eagles raises a chick; hyacinth macaws, green anacondas, and jaguar live in the Pantanal, where yacare caiman fight over mating grounds and court females in the world's largest wetlands. ||||||
| 5 | "The Frozen North" | March 9, 2025 (2025-3-9) | 105 | 3.95 | 0.35/5 |
| Wildlife in Alaska and Canada: In November, a polar bear must wait for a late freeze in Hudson Bay to hunt seals; after failing to kill a moose, a pack of wolves competes with a polar bear over a carcass along the coast; the aurora borealis lights the night sky; a Canada lynx hunts a snowshoe hare in the forests of the Yukon Territory; skiers and snowboarders must beware of spring avalanches in the mountains of Alberta; in late April, male sharp-tailed grouse dance to attract mates on the Canadian Prairies; caribou cross a raging river as they migrate across the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska; male walruses make a "chiming" sound while basking on Alaska's Round Island in July; pink salmon swim upstream in Alaska to mate and lay their eggs. ||||||
| 6 | "The Gulf Coast" | March 16, 2025 (2025-3-16) | 106 | 3.65 | 0.35/5 |
| Along the Gulf Coast of the United States, a Louisiana black bear and her cubs emerge from their den in the spring in the Atchafalaya Swamp of Louisiana, and one adventurous cub faces danger; in the Okefenokee Swamp of southern Georgia, an American alligator protects her hatchlings from a great blue heron and helps them feed through the recently discovered behavior of "facilitated foraging"; a Georgia blind salamander hunts a worm in the darkness of the flooded subterranean caves of the Floridan Aquifer; manatees gather in warm-water springs in Crystal River, Florida, to engage in the social behavior of "cavorting"; in the Everglades of Florida, a Florida applesnail must climb a stalk of saw grass and risk predation by Everglade snail kites to lay her eggs; a large mangrove forest grows along the coast of the Everglades; burrowing owls court, mate, dig their burrows, and raise their chicks on suburban lawns in Marco Island, Florida; barrier islands — including the longest in the world, Padre Island on the southern coast of Texas — protect the coast from hurricanes but are in danger of becoming submerged by sea level rise; during a night at the southern tip of Texas, an ocelot and her kittens play together and hunt a woodrat in a thorn scrub thicket. ||||||
| 7 | "The Andes" | March 23, 2025 (2025-3-23) | 107 | TBD | TBA |
| 8 | "The Caribbean" | March 30, 2025 (2025-3-30) | 108 | TBD | TBA |
| 9 | "The West Coast" | April 6, 2025 (2025-4-6) | 109 | TBD | TBA |
| 10 | "Patagonia" | April 13, 2025 (2025-4-13) | 110 | TBD | TBA |
| Special | "The Making of The Americas" | April 21, 2025 (2025-4-21) | TBA | TBD | TBA |