BBC Two and BBC iPlayer have commissioned a second series of Wilderness. The project consists of four 60 minute episodes written and presented by Simon Reeve. The Garden, a subsidiary of ITV Studios, produces the series in co-production with The Open University.
The new series features expeditions to Papua New Guinea, Mexico, Canada, and Mongolia. In Papua New Guinea, Simon Reeve travels into the Torricelli Mountains. The production team filmed the critically endangered tenkile tree kangaroo in the wild for the first time. The Mexico episodes include filming in the Sea of Cortez with bull sharks and hammerhead sharks. The Canadian leg involves travel by canoe and foot through the Yukon, while the Mongolia sequence covers 3,000 miles via 4WD, horse, and foot from the Gobi Desert to the Altai mountains, including a filming encounter with a snow leopard.
The production involves interviews with jungle conservationists, marine biologists, First Nations communities, and Kazakh eagle hunters. Sam Bagnall serves as Executive Producer, while Chris Mitchell is the Series Producer and Director. The commission was handled by Jack Bootle, BBC Head of Commissioning for Specialist Factual, and Tom Coveney, BBC Commissioning Editor and Head of Science.
New episodes of Wilderness are available on BBC iPlayer from 20 September.