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Asia (2024 TV series)

Asia is a 2024 British television series co-produced by the BBC Studios Natural History Unit, BBC America, ZDF and France Télévisions. It focuses on wildlife and wild habitats in Asia, and was four years in the making. It consists of seven hour-long episodes. The series was filmed in 120 shoots in 24 countries, including the Philippines, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Egypt, Israel, Russia, Japan, Nepal, Thailand, India, Oman, Pakistan, China, Malaysia, Iraq, Taiwan, Vietnam, Singapore, Mongolia, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Uzbekistan and Hong Kong.

Episodes

Filming firsts

A number of firsts were achieved by this series; behaviours, spectacles and phenomena that had never been filmed or even documented before. Some of these include:

  • Moorish idols chased by grey reef sharks
  • Whirlpools, Komodo National Park
  • Dusky sharks living by a power station
  • Swifts predated upon by fish, Tham Lod Cave
  • Tibetan foxes using domestic yaks as cover to hunt
  • A mother Baikal seal blowing bubbles to allow her pup to breathe underwater
  • Tibetan wolf hunting chiru
  • Ussuri tube-nosed bat hibernation and emergence
  • Two pairs of Bengal tigers mating within just 100 metres of each other
  • Persian leopard female and cubs in Iraqi Kurdistan
  • Checkered keelbacks hunting fish by a culvert
  • Gobi bears
  • Cannibalism in Socotran cormorants
  • Mongolian wolves hunting tahki

Production

Music

The original score for Asia was composed by Jacob Shea and Laurentia Editha of Bleeding Fingers Music, a composer collective co-founded by Hans Zimmer. The score accompanies the seven-part natural history series and reflects the diverse environments and wildlife featured across the continent. The soundtrack album was released by Silva Screen Records in December 2024.

For the series’ global trailer, Bleeding Fingers Music collaborated with South Korean group SEVENTEEN on an original track. The track was co-composed by SEVENTEEN member Woozi and producers from Prismfilter (Prismfilter Music Group), in collaboration with Shea and Editha, and features vocals by members DK and Seungkwan.

Reception

Rebecca Nicholson in The Guardian described Asia as "a televisual wonder", praising the filming, editing, soundtrack and narration, but noted the script "toned down the rhetoric that permeated Planet Earth III". Jasper Rees of The Telegraph similarly noted there are "no climate change sermons", and approved of the series' focus on visuals. Nick Duerden, writing in i, complained that Asias format is unoriginal, but still appreciated the "familiar spell" of an Attenborough nature documentary.

References

External links