Sir David Attenborough presents Asia, a seven-part series exploring the amazing wildlife and natural wonders of our planet’s largest continent. Watch Asia on BBC iPlayer and BBC One from Sunday, November 3.
Across seven episodes exploring each corner of this remarkable part of our planet, audiences will journey through Asia’s most stunning landscapes, witness a wealth of wildlife, and uncover stories of extraordinary, unseen animal behaviour. Filmed over the course of nearly four years, this is the first time that Asia – home to the highest mountain ranges, the deepest oceans, the tallest jungles, and the largest caves – has been the focus of a landmark BBC wildlife series.
In Nepal, we’ll follow rhinos playing ‘kiss chase’ in a bizarre courtship ritual. In the foothills of the Himalayas, amidst forests of bamboo, we’ll meet Asia’s shyest and possibly cutest mammal: the red panda. While 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 that have learnt to team up with fish to hunt.
Asia will also explore the continent’s conservation challenges and highlight the potential solutions championed by the region’s conservation heroes. From the vast Gobi Desert to the jungles of Borneo and from the polar wilderness of Siberia to the coral seas of the Indian Ocean, this series will showcase the breathtaking diversity of Asia’s wildest places.
Speaking about the new series, Executive Producer Roger Webb said, “The Natural History Unit made the series Seven Worlds, One Planet, five years ago now. The team did a tremendous job. One of the episodes was Asia, which did really well. It became clear that there are so many stories beyond what was possible in a single hour for Seven Worlds, One Planet. Everybody who was involved in that particular episode just kept talking about it and the riches that were on offer there. Then it came to light that no one’s really done an in-depth series about Asia and its wildlife, taking the continent as a whole. So we started doing more work collating what other stories might be possible and realised we had such a rich list. Also, there’s a certain mystique and romance about Asia.
Many places in Asia are on people’s bucket lists to visit. You’ve got that element, as well as an incredible cast of animals in incredible places. So we took it to BBC Commissioning, and they were similarly excited about what we proposed. No disrespect to any other continent on the planet, but as Sir David says at the top of the series, there’s nowhere with more untold stories. For us as wildlife filmmakers, there’s nothing more exciting than that. So that was it. We were just energised and excited. We ran with it, and we’ve had the most amazing four years making the series. The team have done an incredible job”.
Asia. Newborn Baikal seal pup (Pusa sibirica) in its den – Lake Baikal, Russia. BBC Studios, Henry M. Mix ©BBC Pictures
Series Producer Matthew Wright added, “We are all driven by story, aren’t we? Whether through watching soap operas, feature films or sports, we crave stories, and the natural world provides that in spades. When we set out to film, we often don’t quite know what we’re going to get. But we’re normally pretty confident that some sort of a story is going to emerge because the natural world just delivers that again and again. The series also provides escapism on a Sunday night. They make us wonder, ‘What would it be like if I went there?’. It’s also the sheer beauty of the natural world. In many aspects of our day-to-day lives, we interact with the natural world somewhat less than we used to. We’re all very busy, and the natural world is less accessible. These series just remind us that we share the planet with an awful lot of remarkably diverse life forms. A series like Asia just offers that sheer sense of wonder”.
2,287 days in the making across 21 countries, Sir David Attenborough’s Asia is an epic, beautiful, revealing and urgent exploration of our natural world. From Asia’s longest coastline and abundant coral reefs to Russia’s frozen Lake Baikal, Hokkaido’s thermal springs and Asia’s diverse jungles and forests teeming with life, this must-watch seven-part series is a true wonder to behold.
Watch Sir David Attenborough’s Asia on BBC iPlayer and BBC One from Sunday, November 3.
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