Human Planet is an 8-part British television documentary series. It is produced by the BBC with co-production from Discovery and BBC Worldwide. It describes the human species and its relationship with the natural world by showing the remarkable ways humans have adapted to life in every environment on Earth.
Announced in 2007, the production teams based at the BBC Natural History Unit in Bristol and BBC Wales spent three years shooting over 70 stories in some of the most remote locations on Earth spanning about 40 countries. Each episode of the series focuses on a different human-inhabited environment, including deserts, jungles, the Arctic, grasslands, rivers, mountains, oceans, and the urban landscape.
For the first time on a BBC landmark series the production had a dedicated stills photographer, Timothy Allen, who documented the project photographically for the books and multimedia that accompany the series.
Human Planet was originally screened in the UK on BBC One each Thursday at 8pm over eight weeks, starting from 13 January 2011. Domestic repeats have been seen on Eden, with all 8 episodes aired over one week in April 2012. BBC Worldwide has since announced they have sold the broadcast rights to 22 international markets.
Human Planet was nominated for 7 BAFTA Television Craft awards, the most for any programme in 2011, and it won 2 of them, both for the Arctic episode, where Jason Savage won the factual editing prize, and Will Edwards, Doug Allan and Matt Norman won the photography (cinematography) prize.
Soaring mountains, burning deserts, tangled forests, and curvaceous coasts. A grizzly bear takedown of helpless elk calves in Yellowstone. Bighorn sheep going head-to-head in battle. Giant Humboldt squid cannibalizing their kin. Puma cubs hunting solo for the first time. The landscapes and wildlife of the Americas are savage, shrewd, and stunning. These are the great outdoors, our wildest frontiers … our Untamed Americas.
