Yellowstone (UK TV series)

Last updated

Yellowstone
BBC Yellowstone title.jpg
Series title card from UK broadcast
Also known asYellowstone: Battle for Life
Genre Nature documentary
Narrated by Peter Firth
Composer(s)Edmund Butt
Country of originUnited Kingdom
Original language(s)English
No. of episodes3
Production
Executive producer(s) Mike Gunton
Producer(s)Andrew Murray
Nathan Budd
Paul D. Stewart
Running time50 minutes
Production company(s) BBC Natural History Unit
Animal Planet
Release
Original network BBC Two
Picture format SD: 576i
HD: 1080i/1080p
Audio formatSD: Stereo
HD: DTS 5.1
Original release15 March (2009-03-15) –
29 March 2009 (2009-03-29)
External links
Website

Yellowstone is a BBC nature documentary series broadcast from 15 March 2009. Narrated by Peter Firth, the series takes a look at a year in the life of Yellowstone National Park, examining how its wildlife adapts to living in one of the harshest wildernesses on Earth. Yellowstone debuted on BBC Two at 8:00pm on Sunday 15 March 2009 and has three episodes. Each 50-minute episode was followed by a ten-minute film called Yellowstone People, featuring visitors to the Park and locals who had assisted the production team. The series was the channel's highest-rated natural history documentary in over five years with audiences peaking at over four million. [1]

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters are at Broadcasting House in Westminster, London, and it is the world's oldest national broadcasting organisation and the largest broadcaster in the world by number of employees. It employs over 20,950 staff in total, 16,672 of whom are in public sector broadcasting. The total number of staff is 35,402 when part-time, flexible, and fixed-contract staff are included.

Nature documentary film genre

A natural history film or wildlife film is a documentary film about animals, plants, or other non-human living creatures, usually concentrating on film taken in their natural habitat but also often including footage of trained and captive animals. Sometimes they are about wild animals, plants, or ecosystems in relationship to human beings. Such programmes are most frequently made for television, particularly for public broadcasting channels, but some are also made for the cinema medium. The proliferation of this genre occurred almost simultaneously alongside the production of similar television series.

Peter Firth English actor

Peter Macintosh Firth is an English actor. He is best known for his role as Sir Harry Pearce in the BBC One show Spooks; he is the only actor to have appeared in every episode of the show's ten-series lifespan. He has given myriad additional television and film performances, most notably as Alan Strang in Equus (1977), earning a Golden Globe Award and an Academy Award nomination for the role.

Contents

In the United States, an edited version of the series was broadcast under the title Yellowstone: Battle for Life. It aired as a two-hour TV special, and premiered on Animal Planet on 22 March 2009.

Animal Planet American basic cable and satellite television channel

Animal Planet is an American pay television channel owned by Discovery, Inc. First established on October 1, 1996, the network is primarily devoted to series and documentaries about wild animals and domestic pets.

The series was one of the most popular titles at BBC Worldwide's annual market for international clients with pre-sales to nine territories including Spain (Canal+), Germany (WDR), Russia (Channel 1) and Italy (RTI). [2]

Production

Yellowstone was commissioned by Roly Keating, then Controller of BBC Two, as a follow-up to the award-winning series Galápagos which aired in autumn 2006. Filming began in January 2007 and continued through the following four seasons. [3] Filming techniques previously used for both Galapagos and Planet Earth were again put to good use, including shooting with high definition cameras and high-speed shooting to slow down fast action sequences. Stabilised camera mounts also enabled the team to capture natural animal behaviour from the air, as well as dramatic, wide angle landscape shots. Aerial cinematography was provided by Aerial Camera Systems. [4]

<i>Galápagos</i> (2006 TV series) BBC nature documentary series

Galápagos is a three-part BBC nature documentary series exploring the natural history of the Galápagos Islands and their important role in the formation of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. It was first transmitted in the UK on BBC Two in September 2006. The series was filmed in high definition, produced by Mike Gunton and Patrick Morris of the BBC Natural History Unit and narrated by actress Tilda Swinton. The series was proposed to the BBC by the principal cinematographers Paul D. Stewart and Richard Wollocombe.

<i>Planet Earth</i> (2006 TV series) TV series

Planet Earth is a 2006 British television series produced by the BBC Natural History Unit. Five years in the making, it was the most expensive nature documentary series ever commissioned by the BBC and also the first to be filmed in high definition. The series received multiple awards, including four Emmy Awards, a Peabody Award, and an award from the Royal Television Society.

Yellowstone was produced by the BBC Natural History Unit and Animal Planet. The executive producer was Mike Gunton and the series producer Andrew Murray. The British version was narrated by Peter Firth.

The BBC Natural History Unit (NHU) is a department of the BBC which produces television, radio and online content with a natural history or wildlife theme. It is best known for its highly regarded nature documentaries, including The Blue Planet and Planet Earth, and has a long association with David Attenborough's authored documentaries, their notably called Life on Earth.

Mike Gunton British television producer

Mike Gunton is a British television producer and a senior executive at the BBC Natural History Unit, the world's largest production unit dedicated to wildlife film-making. In November 2009 he became the Unit's first Creative Director.

Episodes

EpisodeTitleOriginal air dateUK viewers (in millions)
1"Winter"15 March 2009 (2009-03-15)4.04 million viewers (14.1% audience share) [5]
A Yellowstone wolf pack in winter Yellowstone Wolves.jpg
A Yellowstone wolf pack in winter

With temperatures plunging to –40°C and several metres of snowfall, Yellowstone freezes solid for six months each year. In the extreme cold, moisture in the air freezes, creating diamond dust. The severe winter is the greatest challenge facing the Park's animals, but for the wolf, it is the season of opportunity. The film follows the Druid pack, one of the largest in Yellowstone, as they stalk ever-weakening prey. As herds of elk move to sheltered valleys at the edge of the Park, the wolves lie in wait. Other scavengers such as coyotes and bald eagles also take advantage of wolf kills. On the open plateau, bison are built to endure the worst of the winter, bulldozing their way through deep snow to reach grass. In the harshest winter for a decade, even they are forced to move, following a thermal river to a geyser field. The grass here is laced with silica and arsenic – if the bison stay too long, it will poison them. Aerial shots reveal the tracks of otters and coyotes moving through the snow. The coyote steals a trout stashed beneath the ice of Yellowstone Lake by the otters. The red fox is another year-round resident, listening for and pouncing on mice moving under six feet of snow. By the end of March, winter has loosened its grip, and the emergence of grizzly bears from hibernation in their mountain dens signals the approach of spring.

Yellowstone People, produced by Nathan Budd, follows another winter resident, roof shoveler Jeff Henry. [6]
2"Summer"22 March 2009 (2009-03-22)3.94 million viewers (13.8% audience share) [5]
Bison graze near one of the Park's hot springs Bison near a hot spring in Yellowstone.JPG
Bison graze near one of the Park's hot springs

As the Sun gains strength,one direction the Park begins to thaw and grazers move back up to higher altitudes. The hardy bison are amongst the first, their newborn calves struggling to cross rivers swollen by meltwater during the journey. Bison, along with elk, pronghorn and migrant birds, are drawn to the fertile pastures of the plateau. Newborn pronghorn twins must use the long grass for camouflage against prowling coyotes. There is a rare sight of wolf pups as the Druid pack venture from the woods to visit the riverside. By June, the blooming wildflower meadows attract calliope and rufous hummingbirds, but when a summer blizzard blows in, the birds must turn to sugar-rich tree sap to survive. As summer returns, a new challenge emerges: Yellowstone begins to dry out. Yellowstone cutthroat trout mass in shallow streams ready to spawn, but they make easy prey for otters and osprey. In August, the hot, dry plateau is the scene of the annual bison rut. Lightning can spark fierce wildfires, but the short-term devastation is part of the ecological cycle and helps the lodgepole pine forests regenerate. Meanwhile, grizzly bears converge on the high mountain slopes as they seek out an unusual food source: army cutworm moths, which arrive in their millions from the prairies. A female bear is injured in a clash with a male, but they must take advantage of the bounty before the brief summer is over.

In Yellowstone People, produced by Kathy Kasic, we meet the 'geyser gazers', tourists drawn to Yellowstone's famous geysers. [7]
3"Autumn"29 March 2009 (2009-03-29)3.83 million viewers (14.3% audience share) [5]
Bull elk calling during the rutting season Bull elk bugling during the fall mating season.jpg
Bull elk calling during the rutting season

Autumn is Yellowstone's shortest season and a period of swift change. Conditions change from summer to winter in just two months, forcing animals to leave or prepare for winter. Bison rely on stored fat to see them through, but elk and pronghorn head for lower ground. Their only natural enemy is the wolf, but beyond the Park boundaries they must contend with different hazards: hunting, heavy industry and traffic. Since their reintroduction to Yellowstone in the 1990s, wolves have expanded their range, bringing them into contact with people. Telemetry enables ranchers to track wolves fitted with radio collars and scare them off. The wolf's return has restored the natural balance of Yellowstone: elk no longer graze along the river banks, leaving more willow saplings for beavers. In autumn, beavers are busy repairing their dams and harvesting saplings for their underwater larder. In the Beartooth Mountains, pine squirrels, grizzlies and Clark's nutcrackers take advantage of a bumper crop of cones from the whitebark pines. The trees are under attack from beetle larvae, which now survive through the winter due to the warming climate. By late September, bull elk are exhausted from six weeks of rutting and herding. As the females come into season, only those bulls who still have the strength to see off challengers will have the chance to mate. In Yellowstone's mountains, male bighorn sheep clash horns as the first snows of winter arrive.

Yellowstone People, produced by Kathy Kasic, profiles sound recordist Mike Kasic, who swims in the Park's rivers. [8]

Reception

The Daily Telegraph 's David Horspool described the series as "amazingly shot" and a "work of art". [9] Andrew Billen in The Times gave it five out of five, [10] and TV Scoop described it as "majestic yet understated and consistently surprising". [11]

<i>The Daily Telegraph</i> British daily broadsheet newspaper

The Daily Telegraph, now naming itself simply as The Telegraph, is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally. It was founded by Arthur B. Sleigh in 1855 as Daily Telegraph & Courier.

<i>The Times</i> British daily compact newspaper owned by News UK

The Times is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register, adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers, since 1981 a subsidiary of News UK, itself wholly owned by News Corp. The Times and The Sunday Times do not share editorial staff, were founded independently, and have only had common ownership since 1967.

Awards

At the 2009 Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival, Yellowstone gained the Best Series Award, and "Winter" gained the Best Wildlife Habitat Program award. [12] It was also a finalist in the Best Cinematography category. [13] At the 2009 International Wildlife Film Festival Awards, the series won the Best Cinematography and Best Ecosystem awards, and gained Merit Awards for Editing and Sound Design. [14] Edmund Butt also won the Music – Original Title award at the 2009 Royal Television Society Craft and Design Awards. [15] The series was nominated for the 2010 BAFTA Television Award for Best Specialist Factual. [16] and won a craft BAFTA for Photography Factual in the same year. [17]

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References

  1. ↑ "Yellowstone is instant hit". Broadcast Now. 19 March 2009. Retrieved 2 October 2009.[ dead link ]
  2. ↑ "Natural History titles big sellers at BBC Showcase". BBC Press Office. 10 March 2009. Retrieved 19 April 2009.
  3. ↑ "BBC Natural History heads to Yellow Stone". Broadcast. 8 February 2007. Retrieved 12 October 2009.
  4. ↑ "Aerial Camera Systems: Credits". www.aerialcamerasystems.com. Retrieved 12 October 2009.
  5. 1 2 3 "Weekly Top 30 Programmes". BARB . Retrieved 12 October 2009. (data available for Yellowstone broadcast weeks by searching archive)
  6. ↑ Produced by Andrew Murray (15 March 2009). "Winter". Yellowstone. BBC. BBC Two.
  7. ↑ Produced by Paul D. Stewart (22 March 2009). "Summer". Yellowstone. BBC. BBC Two.
  8. ↑ Produced by Nathan Budd and Andrew Murray (29 March 2009). "Autumn". Yellowstone. BBC. BBC Two.
  9. ↑ Horspool, David (13 March 2009). "TV Review: The No1 Ladies' Detective Agency (BBC One) and Yellowstone (BBC One)". Telegraph.co.uk. Retrieved 19 March 2009.
  10. ↑ Billen, Andrew (16 March 2009). "The Lost World of Communism; Yellowstone; The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency". The Times . London. Retrieved 19 March 2009.
  11. ↑ "TV Review". tvscoop. 29 March 2009. Retrieved 18 April 2009.
  12. ↑ "Winners". Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival. Retrieved 30 January 2010.
  13. ↑ "Film Competition Finalists 2009". Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival. Retrieved 30 January 2010.
  14. ↑ "IWFF Award Winners 2009" (PDF). International Wildlife Film Festival. Retrieved 18 April 2009.
  15. ↑ "RTS Craft and Design Award Winners 2009". Royal Television Society. Archived from the original on 29 November 2009. Retrieved 30 January 2010.
  16. ↑ "Television Awards Winners in 2010". BAFTA. Archived from the original on 23 August 2010. Retrieved 6 June 2010.
  17. ↑ "Television Craft Awards Winners in 2010". British Academy of Film and Television Arts. 26 April 2010. Archived from the original on 13 May 2011. Retrieved 29 August 2010.
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