David Attenborough's 'Mammals' to Premiere on BBC America

David Attenborough was already an institution unto himself when he was originally knighted in 1985 after his groundbreaking documentary series Life series became a breakout hit on the BBC and PBS in the early 1980s. He then redoubled that place in history with his second groundbreaking series, Planet Earth, not only recapturing the natural world on camera for a new generation but inventing new technologies along the way, causing the Queen to redouble his Knighthood in 2022, one of her last acts before passing. Now at the ripe old age of 97, Attenborough shows little sign of slowing down, having recently released Frozen Planet II, Planet Earth III, and his latest series, Mammals, which will come stateside in the summer of 2024.

Mammals is a slightly different series than Attenborough has done before, but one that fits into the activist turn his final years have taken. Having studied the natural world for nearly a century, and covered it for TV for almost as long as TV has existed as a medium, Attenborough has seen firsthand how climate change has wreaked havoc upon the natural world and has decades upon decades of footage to prove it, dating back to the 1950s. In his Planet Earth series, he's tried to put the footage of his original series (taken in the early aughts) next to the new footage (taken in the 2020s) to show how much has changed in such a short period in his final "Making of" episodes, only to see networks quietly bury them. 

So this time, Attenborough went full throttle in making the entire series a compare-and-contrast. Under the guise of looking back from his earlier hit to now, he's taken his Life of Mammals from his original hit series that made him a household name and revisited it in the present day. Mammals will explore just how far Mammals have dominated the planet... and just how far climate change is killing them off.

As part of promoting this series, English rock band Coldplay is lending their hit song "Paradise" to the trailer, in hopes of drawing attention to the show's debut.

Here's the series synopsis:

Twenty years after Life of Mammals, Attenborough revisits this extraordinary group of animals in a major new series: Mammals. Full of new, never-before-seen behaviors, this series offers fascinating insights into the most successful animal group in the world. From the tiny Etruscan shrew to the giant blue whale, Mammals will reveal the secrets of their success and how their winning design, incredible adaptability, unrivaled intelligence, and unique sociability have all contributed to their remarkable rise.

By weight, less than 6% of today’s mammals are wild animals, and many species face extinction. The series will give viewers an exciting new perspective on this remarkable group of animals and highlight many of the problems faced by mammals in today’s rapidly changing world. Each episode explores a different environment; Dark, Cold, Heat, Water, Forest and The New Wild – an episode which explores the ingenious ways mammals are adapting to a world dominated by humans, arguably the most successful mammal of all. And each episode covers a range of remarkable mammals – from the miniature tenrecs of Madagascar to the humpback whales of the Indian ocean.

The series will be narrated by Sir David Attenborough, who wrote the scripts for all six episodes of the series. The Executive Producer is Roger Webb, and the Series Producer is Scott Alexander. 

Mammals will premiere on BBC America and AMC+ this summer with one episode a week airing and streaming on the two networks in tandem.