''Yellowstone'' is a

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

nature documentary A nature documentary or wildlife documentary is a genre of documentary film or television documentary, series about animals, plants, or other non-human living creatures. Nature documentaries usually concentrate on video taken in the subject's nat ...

series broadcast from 15 March 2009. Narrated by

Peter Firth Peter Macintosh Firth (born 27 October 1953) is an English actor. He is best known for his role as Sir Harry Pearce in the BBC One programme '' Spooks''; he is the only actor to have appeared in every episode of the programme's ten-series lif ...

, the series takes a look at a year in the life of

Yellowstone National Park Yellowstone National Park is a List of national parks of the United States, national park of the United States located in the northwest corner of Wyoming, with small portions extending into Montana and Idaho. It was established by the 42nd U ...

, examining how its wildlife adapts to living in one of the harshest wildernesses on Earth. Yellowstone debuted on

BBC Two BBC Two is a British free-to-air Public service broadcasting in the United Kingdom, public broadcast television channel owned and operated by the BBC. It is the corporation's second flagship channel, and it covers a wide range of subject matte ...

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. 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 A television special (often TV special, or rarely television spectacular) is a standalone television show which may also temporarily interrupt episodic programming normally scheduled for a given time slot. Some specials provide a full range of en ...

, and premiered on

Animal Planet Animal Planet (stylized in all lowercase since 2018) is an American multinational pay television channel focusing on the animal kingdom owned by the Warner Bros. Discovery Networks unit of Warner Bros. Discovery. First established on June 1 ...

on 22 March 2009. 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).

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. Filming techniques previously used for both ''Galapagos'' and ''

Planet Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. This is enabled by Earth being an ocean world, the only one in the Solar System sustaining liquid surface water. Almost all of Earth's water is ...

'' 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. ''Yellowstone'' was produced by the

BBC Natural History Unit The BBC Studios Natural History Unit (NHU) is a department of BBC Studios that produces television, radio and online content with a natural history or wildlife theme. It is best known for its highly regarded nature documentaries, including '' T ...

and

. The executive producer was

Mike Gunton 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. As Creativ ...

and the series producer Andrew Murray. The British version was narrated by

Episodes

Reception

The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a British daily broadsheet conservative newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed in the United Kingdom and internationally. It was found ...

'''s David Horspool described the series as "amazingly shot" and a "work of art". Andrew Billen in ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British Newspaper#Daily, daily Newspaper#National, national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its modern name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its si ...

'' gave it five out of five, and TV Scoop described it as "majestic yet understated and consistently surprising".

Awards

At the 2009 Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival, Yellowstone gained the Best Series Award, and "Winter" gained the Best Wildlife Habitat Program award. It was also a finalist in the Best Cinematography category. 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. Edmund Butt also won the Music – Original Title award at the 2009

Royal Television Society The Royal Television Society (RTS) is a British-based educational charity for the discussion, and analysis of television in all its forms, past, present, and future. It is the oldest television society in the world. It currently has fourteen r ...

Craft and Design Awards. The series was nominated for the 2010

BAFTA Television Award The BAFTA TV Awards, or British Academy Television Awards, are presented in an annual award show hosted by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. They have been awarded annually since 1955. Background The first-ever Awards, given in ...

for Best Specialist Factual. and won a craft BAFTA for Photography Factual in the same year.

References

External links

* * {{BBC Natural History Unit Animal Planet original programming BBC television documentaries BBC high definition shows Documentary films about nature Yellowstone National Park 2009 British television series debuts 2009 British television series endings