Reality TV gets ‘real’ tonight in National Geographic Channel’s new miniseries Untamed America, a down-home high-definition exploration of the majesty of Mother Earth.
Academy Award-nominated actor Josh Brolin has teamed up with National Geographic (NG) to present this gripping four-hour look at the Americas as we have never before seen. From wildlife spectacles to soaring mountains and burning deserts, Brolin and crew offers a virtual taste of the great wide-open, our wildest frontiers, or as NG calls it, our Untamed Americas.
Two years in the making, the Untamed Americas team traveled thousands of miles, from Alaska to Patagonia, to observe extreme wildlife. Danger ever present, the crew rappelled down Peruvian cliffs to observe sea lions; endured jellyfish stings to capture their mysteries up close in Monterey Bay, California; braved the dark, dense underbrush of the Ecuadorean cloud forest to unlock its mysteries; confronted extreme heat and cold, and faced off hurricanes, to capture to glory of the Americas most remote regions.
The resulting footage NG’s grueling journey into the wilds of the Americas is stunning. Tonight’s episode: ‘Mountains’, opens with a sprawling and generic view of suburbia, then contrasts that with a panoramic view of the mountains. ‘Mountains’ shows newly awakened black bears on the hunt for newborn elk calves, then takes a trip to the Rockies, for a ringside seat as male bighorn sheep go head-to-head in a bloody battle for breeding rights.
In ‘Deserts,’ airing after ‘Mountains,’ viewers are invited to race along with mustangs in the Great Basin desert as one outcast male fights to regain his place in the herd. Then, NG goes to the Atacama Desert where Humboldt penguins raise families in the driest place on earth.
Tomorrow night brings another two hours of exciting exploration. In ‘Coasts,’ the team witnesses male gentoo penguins perform mating jigs to attract females. Then they plunge into the Sea of Cortez off the coast of Mexico, where hordes of voracious giant Humboldt squid cannibalize their kin.
In ‘Forests,’ viewer witness journey through the forests of the Americas, an adventure of extremes—flood, freeze, and fire. The team explores how the animals that live there not only endure, but adapt and thrive in surprising ways.
Brolin is effective as the disembodied narrator, but nature takes center-stage. With the help of a music score that is equally well suited for a scene in Blade Runner, the action and glory of the wild comes alive in vivid high-definition. Animal violence takes on a new dimension, as close-ups of Rams battering each other yields bloody results. Wide-angled views of vast mountain ranges, rolling hills and expansive deserts make for spectacular arm-chair travel. In the end, Untamed Americas delivers a birds-eye view of nature at both extremes, deadly and dazzling.
Untamed Americas is a two-night miniseries event airing Sunday, June 10 and Monday June 11, from 9:00 pm to 11:00pm ET/PT on the National Geographic Channel, Nat Geo WILD, and Nat Geo Mundo.