AMC Networks is set to make a big splash next month, airing the first episode of nature documentary sequel series Planet Earth: Blue Planet II on five its channels next month.

BBC America, AMC, IFC, WE tv and SundanceTV will air the initial installment of the seven-part series on at 9 PM Saturday, January 20. Narrated by Sir David Attenborough, scored by Hans Zimmer and produced by James Honeyborne, Blue Planet II will bow day-and-date in Canada on BBC Earth. It already has aired in other parts of the world and was the top-rated series of 2017 and the most-watched natural history title in more than 15 years.

AMC Networks

Nearly a half-decade in production, Planet Earth: Blue Planet II takes viewers on a journey into the mesmerizing world of our oceans – the most undiscovered place on the planet. Oceans cover 70% of Earth’s surface and hold 97% of all the water in the world, and there is more life in the deep sea than anywhere else on the planet. It is said we know more about the surface of Mars than the depths of our own “inner space.”

Among some of the remarkable “firsts” for Planet Earth: Blue Planet II:

  • Producer Orla Doherty and her team were the first humans to dive 3,280 feet into the frigid waters of the Antarctic, in a deep manned submersible, to explore under icebergs the size of a city block and discover creatures so alien they could come from outer space.
  • At 2,000 feet deep in the Gulf of Mexico, they filmed methane volcanoes erupting with bubbles the size of basketballs.
  • Life was thought to be impossible in the deepest point of the Earth’s ocean, seven miles down, but they filmed creatures living under a pressure equivalent to 50 jumbo jets stacked on top of one another.
  • Species such as leaping blennies – fish that live almost exclusively on land; Giant trevally that fly out of the water to snatch seabirds in mid-air; the ingenious coral grouper, a fish that enlists the help of an octopus to hunt little fish hiding among coral and, perhaps most charming of all, the industrious tuskfish, who uses a coral anvil to crack open his clams.

The series hails from BBC Studios’ Natural History Unit, co-produced with BBC America, Tencent, WDR, France Télévisions and CCTV9 in partnership with The Open University. It is executive produced by Honeyborne and produced by Mark Brownlow.