''Africa'' is a

2013 File:2013 Events Collage V2.png, From left, clockwise: Edward Snowden becomes internationally famous for leaking classified NSA wiretapping information; Typhoon Haiyan kills over 6,000 in the Philippines and Southeast Asia; The Dhaka garment fact ...

British television series created 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 '' ...

. It focuses on wildlife and wild habitats in

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

, and was four years in the making. It consists of six hour-long episodes and six 10-minute-long featurettes.

Broadcast

As ''Africa'' was broadcast on

BBC One BBC One is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network owned and operated by the BBC. It is the corporation's flagship network and is known for broadcasting mainstream programming, which includes BBC News television bulletins, p ...

in the United Kingdom, the six episodes are each an hour in length, comprising the main programme and a 10-minute featurette called ''Eye to Eye'' which details the filming of a particular event. In the United States, ''Africa'' was broadcast as a seven-part series on the

Discovery Channel Discovery Channel (known as The Discovery Channel from 1985 to 1995, and often referred to as simply Discovery) is an American cable channel owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, a publicly traded company run by CEO David Zaslav. , Discovery Channe ...

starting from 8 January 2013. While the first five episodes are redubbed in the American version as

Forest Whitaker Forest Steven Whitaker (born July 15, 1961) is an American actor. He is the recipient of List of awards and nominations received by Forest Whitaker, various accolades, including an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, a British Academy Film Award ...

gives narration, the sixth ("Africa: The Future") is left untouched as David Attenborough presents the episode on-screen. The seventh is a compilation of the ''Eye to Eye'' making-of featurettes. In

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

, it was broadcast on the Chinese language version of

CCTV-9 CCTV-9 is a television channel operated by Chinese state broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV), broadcasting documentaries in Mandarin Chinese. It shared the name with CCTV's English language documentary channel until 31 December 2016, when ...

. In

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, borde ...

, only five episodes of ''Africa'' are broadcast on

Mediacorp Mediacorp Pte. Ltd., doing business as Mediacorp and stylised as mediacorp, is a media conglomerate in Singapore. Owned by Temasek Holdings—the holding company of the Government of Singapore—it owns television, radio, and digital media prope ...

Okto Okto is a daily children's program block on Mediacorp's Channel 5. The block airs daily during 5's morning and midafternoon time slots. It is also a weekend Mandarin children's program block on Mediacorp's Channel 8. It airs every weekend fro ...

on Animal Nights. The Animal Nights from 15 July 2013 to 24 July 2013 was used to broadcast the documentary. Each telecast was on the Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays of the week from 9pm-10pm.

Episodes

Reception

The series received critical acclaim.

Merchandise

DVD and Blu-ray

The series was released in the UK as a three-disc DVD (BBCDVD3741) and

Blu-ray The Blu-ray Disc (BD), often known simply as Blu-ray, is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 2005 and released on June 20, 2006 worldwide. It is designed to supersede the DVD format, and capable of sto ...

(BBCBD0227) box set on 18 February 2013. Region 1 DVD and Blu-ray box sets of the Discovery series were released on 26 February 2013.

Book

An accompanying hardcover book called ''Africa: Eye to Eye with the Unknown'' () was published by

Quercus An oak is a tree or shrub in the genus ''Quercus'' (; Latin "oak tree") of the beech family, Fagaceae. There are approximately 500 extant species of oaks. The common name "oak" also appears in the names of species in related genera, notably '' ...

on 6 December 2012. It was written by Michael Bright, a former BBC Natural History Unit producer, with a foreword by David Attenborough. The book is divided into chapters which correspond to the six programmes in the TV series. A separate chapter explains how the series was made.

Soundtrack

A soundtrack (silcd1421) was released on 18 March 2013.

Calendar

An official 2014 calendar () was released on 16 September 2013.

References

External links

* *
Africa
' at

BBC Earth BBC Earth is a brand used by BBC Studios since 2009 to market and distribute the BBC's natural history content to countries other than the United Kingdom. BBC Studios is the commercial arm of the public service broadcaster. BBC Earth commercia ...

* {{David Attenborough BBC high definition shows BBC television documentaries 2010s British documentary television series 2013 British television series debuts 2013 British television series endings Discovery Channel original programming Documentary films about nature David Attenborough