By Valerie Milano
Beverly Hills, CA (The Hollywood Times) 7/27/19 – – “Many tales have been told of Africa… but none like this. This is our story. This is Serengeti,” says the voice of Academy Award®-winner Lupita Nyong’o as she narrates a new graphically stimulating series called Serengeti.
The six-part series created and directed by Emmy® winners Simon Fuller and John Downer in partnership with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) features a dramatized telling of the lives of Kali the lioness, Bakari the baboon, Nalla the elephant, KiKay the cheetah, and more as they navigate the treacherous landscape known as the Serengeti.
The series aims to chronicle the lives of these animals over the course of one year.
As the series premiere entitled Destiny opens, we’re introduced to Kali who we learn has birthed her four lion cubs in secret for fear of being exiled from her pride. The viewer can’t help but to relate as numerous parallels are drawn to our own daily lives based on the common themes of love, loss, and survival. In a way, the project almost successfully humanizes creatures we’ve oftentimes feared.
“The way we built the stories was to follow these characters, follow story lines, but also incorporate events that were life-changing for any animal. So that became the style of it. We like to think the animals were telling their story because we didn’t force a narrative on them, but we took the narrative from them,” shared Downer during a stop in Los Angeles on their summer press tour.
“We had a very fluid script and that was informed by the behavior of the animals we were following,” he continued.
The audience will be humming the original score days later which is sung by Lola Lennox. The series also features more original music by Will Gregory.
Serengeti debuts commercial free on Sunday, August 4 th at 8PM on the Discovery Channel with new episodes airing on subsequent Sundays.
