Tom Hanks Narrates NBC Nature Docuseries

If Charles Darwin had written On the Origin of Species after a long weekend spent watching epic nature series in pristine HD from the comfort of his sofa, he likely would have based his evolutionary theories on “survival of the cutest.”

Boosted by constant improvements in filming technology and boasting borderline interchangeable names like Planet Earth, Our Planet, Blue Planet and Man vs. Beast, nature documentaries are one of our planet’s great renewable resources — and to my mind, there are two easily definable subsets.

In the majority of the biggest and most visible nature docs, our planet is a vast and previously unknowable expanse and what we’re beginning to learn is scary and unsettling. But for all of the dangers presented by the depths of the ocean and the peaks of mountains, cuteness or wildly exaggerated ugliness generally prevail. Not all the time, but at least 80 percent of the time. Baby animals will face death in its myriad unpredictable forms only to be protected by their devoted parents (mothers 80 percent of the time) or their own innate and recognizably anthropomorphized ingenuity. If an ugly animal survives, it’s usually because its ugliness masks a recognizably anthropomorphized superpower — a bioluminescent wattle or protruding third eye that shoots lasers. That sort of thing. Nature is wondrous and a bit predictable.

Then you get the occasional exception, a docuseries that audaciously reduces the survival afforded by adorability to something closer to 50 percent, or even lower. Nature, those documentaries tell us, is unpredictable and doesn’t abide by human standards, no matter how hard we try to anthropomorphize.

NBC‘s new 10-part nature series, The Americas, is definitely not in that latter category.

Hailing from producer Mike Gunton (Life, Planet Earth II) and the BBC Studios Natural History Unit, The Americas is as safe and conventionalized a portrait of our wild world as you could ever hope to see, accompanied by the safe and conventionalized musings of pervasive narrator Tom Hanks.

But if you don’t approach it looking to have your expectations or your place within the world challenged, The Americas completely delivers on the very basic things you’re looking for in a wildlife series. The photography is astonishing. You’re bound to learn something (even if your retention is limited). And provided you root for the cute, baby animals over the gnarly predators, your heart is likely to be lifted three to five times per episode.

Filmed over five years and over 180 expeditions, The Americas takes a 10-episode journey up and down the “supercontinent,” from “The Frozen North” (Canada, Alaska and whatnot) to “Patagonia” (Argentina, Chile and whatnot), from “The Atlantic Coast” to “The West Coast” and basically everywhere in-between. Some of the terrain has been well-covered within the genre — I’ve spent far more time in recent years with certain types of ultra-rare salamanders than with most of my friends from high school — and then there are the swaths of geography that have been less chronicled.

The Americas is very good at having Hanks tell you every time he’s about to show you something that was never filmed before, like an entertainment reporter boasting about an “EXCLUSIVE.” Sometimes those exclusives are fantastic — the playful behavior of a pod of blue whales or a death-defying leap from a towering redwood by one of those slimy salamanders — and sometimes you’re reminded that just because you’ve never seen something before doesn’t mean that you’ll have any memories of seeing it 15 minutes after the grand reveal.

Most viewers will not watch 10 episodes of The Americas in a three-day binge the way I did, and as a weekly viewing experience, it’s less likely that you’ll get bogged down in how quickly the series’ various vignettes become repetitive. There are at least three different episodes that feature mama bears coming out of hibernation and looking for different ways to feed her twin — always twin — cubs. It isn’t like stories of mama bears feeding adorable twin cubs ever become dull, but you realize how fast even the natural world falls into the tropes of a Pixar movie.

If you were to have said to the producers of The Americas, “Look, we know that screwing and feeding are the dual hallmarks of the natural world, but limit yourself to five mating rituals and five sequences of parents teaching their kids to hunt,” the series would have been a maximum of two hours long.

Animals whose mating rituals are showcased in The Americas include: cranes, stallions, sharp-tailed grouses, walruses, salmon, salamanders, whales, crabs, hummingbirds, burrowing owls, different hummingbirds, flamingos, alligators, stag beetles, big-ass seals.

Animals whose parents struggle to feed them in The Americas include: bobcats, jaguars, bears, otters, whales, baby sharks doo doo doo doo doo doo, more bears, alligators, more bears, harpy eagles, penguins and tamarin monkeys.

Nature is repetitive, nature is adorable and The Americas is one of those documentaries that wants to keep viewers in relative comfort; most of the time you know that if Hanks takes the time to introduce you to a “character” who is adorable and has a simple goal — screwing or eating — that goal will be met. There’s almost no nightmare fuel here, with the concentration remaining on unique survival mechanisms that would be much less impressive without the “surviving” part.

Hanks carries the show along with his familiar, avuncular charm, telling endearing stories and adding to the overall vintage Pixar aura of this approach to nature. Delivering granular facts and figures isn’t what he does best, but he has no problems creating instant empathy for a wee caribou separated from its mother or thousands of crabs trying to cross a freeway in Cuba. Sometimes he gets perhaps a smidge over-enthusiastic about humping animals, but who am I to judge?

And any time Hanks needs a little help with empathy-building, the score by Hans Zimmer, Anze Rozman and Kara Talve is there to make things rousing or hilarious or melancholic, working in a variety of genres and emulating some very famous pieces of classical music or film composition.

Big picture, The Americas aims to evoke wonderment and provoke exploration, but if you’re of the opinion that in 2025, nature is inherently a political concern, the series is as non-threatening as, well, a pair of bobcat kittens or a pair of black bear clubs. Especially in any episode in which “ice” plays a role, Hanks will inevitably mention warming temperatures, but if you want him to actually use the phrase “climate change,” you’ll be disappointed. Occasionally humanity is presented as a very minor impediment to some of these natural wonders. But other than the lightest, least confrontational acknowledgement that it’s bad how much of the Amazonian rainforest has been cut down, there is no call to action regarding anything a viewer might do when it comes to conservation, preservation or advocacy.

When Hanks says that life finds a way, he’s both quoting Jurassic Park and freeing audiences from any responsibility to protect anything that we’re watching. Looking out for our fuzzy buddies is probably the least political thing a nature documentary could recommend and, beyond that, the most political thing in The Americas is that, as of the publishing of this review, the multiple episodes set in and around the Gulf of Mexico still feature maps referring to it as the “Gulf of Mexico.” Pay close attention when the episodes eventually air to see if kowtowing occurs.

Or just pay close attention to the time-lapse footage of emerging cicadas or the cavorting manatees or the Darwin’s rhea, a South American ostrich that happens to be from one of the few species in the documentary that let males raise their kids. Rest assured, this is one of those documentaries that says that everything in nature is going to be alright.

Here’s hoping it’s correct.