91Èȱ¬

By Matthew Wright, Series Producer

Our main goal as wildlife film-makers is to entertain and thrill our audiences with the best stories from the natural world – and what really excites us are new stories. To our joy, Asia proved to be teeming with new creatures, new behaviours and new landscapes – but the only snag was that we had to work very hard to capture them…

Asia is the largest continent on Earth. It stretches from the Arctic Circle to the tropics. Its western shores meet the Mediterranean, and in the east it nearly reaches Alaska. Asia is simply colossal. It’s also home to the most spectacular wildlife on the planet.

Despite all this, the 91Èȱ¬ Natural History Unit has never dedicated a landmark series to Asia – until now. Working on this project has been a tremendous privilege, and also a significant challenge – many parts of Asia are extremely remote, largely unknown, or frequently off-limits. Its wildlife is less well-studied than that of Africa and the Americas, so we had fewer leads to go on when we started our research.

Planning a series of this nature is always daunting. Our relatively small Bristol-based production team worked for four years to bring this series to the screen. We started by scouring scientific papers, books, websites and social media looking for stories. We spoke to colleagues, conservationists and tour guides too. Once running orders were drawn up, we spent two years and over 2,500 days filming. Crew from 30 different countries worked with us in the field, sharing their local knowledge to capture footage we could never have obtained on our own. Finally, the vast quantity of material we’d gathered was edited and polished over the last year of production.

The series is made up of seven diverse episodes:

• Beneath the Waves looks at the remarkable diversity of life found in some of the twenty-one seas that surround Asia, including bioluminescent squid, a ridiculously cute sea slug, gigantic manta rays, and the air-breathing mudskipper fish.

• Above the Clouds explores the varied mountains that tower over the continent, from tropical peaks covered in dense forest, to the unparalleled heights of the Himalaya. Animals include mountaineering elephants, elusive red pandas, and the iconic snow leopard.

• The Frozen North takes us on a journey across a variety of wintery landscapes – ice worlds, snowfields, sub-zero deserts and frozen ocean. The tough animals that live here include elegant red-crowned cranes, Himalayan wolves, and polar bears.

• Tangled Worlds focusses on the parts of Asia where vegetation dominates. Tropical jungles and temperate forests shelter some of the continent’s most iconic animals: tigers, pandas, rhinos, and orangutans.

• Crowded Continent embeds us in the human world – Asia contains more people than all the other continents put together. Remarkable animals are making their homes in its cities and villages, along its roads, and in its agricultural land – including elephants, giant flying squirrels, and proboscis monkeys.

• The Arid Heart shines a light on Asia’s deserts and dry grasslands, where the lack of water shapes the landscape and defines the lives of its inhabitants, such as the astonishingly rare Gobi bear, majestic Asiatic lion, and bizarre long-eared jerboa.

• Saving Asia follows conservation heroes in different parts of the continent, as they work passionately to save Asian wildlife. We meet people relocating sun bears in Malaysia, breeding highly endangered green magpies in Indonesia, and fighting the illegal wildlife trade in Nepal.

Making this series has involved a lot of calculated risks, to try and film things that have never been captured before. The past four years have been at times stressful and challenging, but also enormously fascinating, uplifting and exciting. On behalf of the entire production team, we hope you enjoy watching it as much as we enjoyed making it.