'Frozen Planet II' Arriving This Winter on BBC America
At 96 years old, U.K. national treasure David Attenborough has been making documentary specials about the natural world for 70+ years. Though one of his few British contemporaries still remaining, Queen Elizabeth finally passed in 2022 (she was all of a few weeks older), he's still going. The first of his two new projects in the Planet Earth series announced in 2019 has come to fruition, Frozen Planet II, which debuted on the BBC back in the fall. Now, BBC America has announced the icy series will arrive in the dead of winter here in the U.S., with a debut on both the network and streamer AMC+ at the end of January 2023.
Attenborough, who became famous in the U.S. after the wild success of his Life on Earth series, first started the Planet Earth franchise with The Blue Planet in 2001, with explored the world's oceans. Planet Earth followed five years later, in 2006, using groundbreaking filming technology, followed by Frozen Planet five years onward in 2011. Like Blue Planet, Frozen Planet was a more focused series covering stuff Planet Earth skimmed, taking a long hard look at the planet's polar regions over seven one-hour episodes.
Even back then, Frozen Planet served as a call to action on Attenborough's part, begging viewers to care about climate change and discussing the melting of these regions and the collapse of ecosystems. In the intervening time, Attenborough has made both Planet Earth II (2016) and Blue Planet II (2017), which, in addition to breaking new ground, used their sequel status to highlight how fast the planet is changing. Frozen Planet II will also cover new ground and revisit areas from the first series and will almost certainly be a much louder klaxon a decade on.
