Stephen Fry hosts a new landmark wildlife series exploring how our annual journey around the sun impacts nearly all life on Earth. As we orbit our star, it is on a tilted axis of around 23.5 degrees and this creates the seasons. For those in the northern hemisphere, Winter brings plummeting temperatures, darkening days and times of hunger. On Svalbard's frozen sea-ice, a polar bear mother is preparing her cub for a life alone. Each week without food, she loses around a tenth of her body weight.
As the North starts to face the sun, the great melt begins, and there's a baby boom. But for penguins and foxes in the South, conditions are getting harsher.
Summer can be extreme. In The Rockies, summers are short. Pika must harvest flowers to eat before the snow returns. For Marion Island’s king penguin chicks, life has frozen still.
Autumn signals change. For many, change brings opportunity, but also huge challenges. For some, like Monarch butterflies, it offers a chance to begin again or take a new path.
See the incredible strategies animals like red squirrels, pikas and penguins use to cope with their changing worlds, as we journey through the seasons, in our orbit around the sun.
These are the stories of the scientists and conservationists who have have used pioneering techniques to uncover new behaviour, enabling us to film this extraordinary series.
