BBC America Sets Premiere Date for David Attenborough's 'Mammals'

Considering that Sir David Attenborough's filmography extends back 72 years, starting in 1952, and 2024 marks his 70th year presenting since his first TV appearance in 1954's Zoo Quest on the BBC, the decision to look back on a series he made a mere 20 years ago for his new show Mammals, seems relatively recent. But a lot has happened in the 22 years since the original Life of Mammals debuted in 2002 and now, climate change-wise. Attenborough's choice to pick something recent to contrast and compare (as opposed to something from the 1950s or 1960s) seems deliberately timed as if to warn us that change is happening fast now, and there's no more time left.

And who can blame him? Attenborough has dedicated his life to the study of the natural world. He's spent eight decades bringing it to viewers back home, sitting in their living rooms, teaching us about the world via television for almost as long as TV has existed as a medium. While his work has brought him titles and accolades and more than a few animals bearing his name, it's also given him a front-row seat to how the way humans interact with the natural world from the 1940s and 50s, when no one thought twice about keeping a pet orangutan, to today, as climate change wreaks havoc upon the planet almost daily. Moreover, he has decades upon decades of footage to prove it.

In the more recent installments of the Planet Earth series, Attenborough tried to put the footage of his original series (taken in the early aughts) next to the new footage (taken in the 2020s) to show how much has changed in such a short period in his final "Making of" episodes, only to see the BBC quietly bury them. Mammals will allow no such hiding from inconvenient facts, exploring just how far our order has dominated the planet... and just how quickly climate change is killing them off.