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."
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's 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 .
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."
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 airing on April 20 on NBC and will consist of behind-the-scenes footage showing viewers how the filmmakers made spectacular shots seen in the series.