David Attenborough to Present 'Asia'

Lately, there’s been a lot about “gerontocracy” and whether or not older people can cognitively handle high-level jobs. For those who need an example showing that age ain’t nothing but a number and you’re only as old as you let yourself feel, I give you Sir David Attenborough. The man is less than two years shy of having lived an entire century, and he’s still hosting and narrating multi-years-long projects and overseeing landmark natural history programs for the BBC. Since 2020, he has released no less than 19 TV series and specials produced for companies, from BBC to Netflix, and aired/streamed everywhere, from PBS to Amazon Prime Video. Now he’s back with his 20th series of the decade, Asia, a new seven-parter deep diving into the planet’s largest landmass.

This is the first time Asia has been the primary focus of a major BBC wildlife series, which speaks to how Western-focus the Nature unit has been in the last few decades. But with Asia, the BBC will seek to correct that, with Attenborough highlighting some of the continent’s stunning landscapes, from the highest mountain range to the deepest ocean, the tallest jungles to the world’s biggest cave. 

Filming for the series began in 2020, capturing climates as varied as the Gobi Desert to the Borneo jungles. Episodes span from Siberia’s polar wildernesses to the Indian Ocean’s coral seas. The BBC announcement promises to take viewers to places like Lake Baikal, the oldest and deepest lake in the world, Russia’s taiga forests, Iran’s Lut Desert, and the Arabian Peninsula’s Empty Quarter. As all of Attenborough’s newer projects have done, it will also examine the human animal and our habitats, including Tokyo, Bangkok, Taipei, Bhopal, Hanoi, and Singapore. It will also cover the challenges of climate change, potential solutions, and stories of conservation heroes, which will feature prominently in the series.

Here's the series' logline:

Seven one-hour episodes will feature thrilling wildlife stories from each corner of the continent. In Nepal, we’ll follow rhinos playing ‘kiss chase’ in a bizarre courtship ritual. In the foothills of the Himalaya, amidst forests of bamboo, we’ll meet Asia’s shyest and possibly cutest mammal: the red panda. Five thousand metres up on the Tibetan Plateau, we’ll witness a lone wolf relentlessly hunting a herd of antelope for hours on end. In Sri Lanka, we’ll join elephants that have learnt to become highway thieves – holding up buses to get food from the passengers. And in the rich waters of the Western Pacific, we’ll swim with sea snakes and fish that have learnt to team up in order to hunt together in huge shoals.

Attenborough will once again lend his sonorous voice to the project, narrating all seven series episodes. The BBC Head of Commissioning for its Natural History unit, Sreya Biswas, said as part of the announcement: “We are absolutely delighted to have Sir David Attenborough presenting our fantastic new landmark series Asia for BBC One. Asia is a continent steeped in beauty and intrigue with some of the most wonderfully diverse habitats on the planet. A feast for the eyes, bringing these incredible locations and wildlife to the screen, with some behaviors never seen before, has been really exciting.”

As always, Attenborough's executive produced the project alongside Roger Webb, with Matthew Wright as the series producer. BBC Studios Natural History Unit produced the series and co-produced with BBC America, France Télévisions, and ZDF.

Asia is expected to debut on BBCOne before the end of 2024 and follow on AMC+ and BBC America in early 2025.