I suspect they got Tom Hanks to narrate this because he is such a popular actor. But frankly, who narrates is mostly immaterial. Some complain about him but to me he does a fine job. Others would have also.
To the meat of the programming. When you consider how extensive "The Americas" is - North America, Central America, and South America - no program, no matter how detailed it is, could cover everything about all of it.
So what they did here is first, select regions, like the Gulf Coast or the Andes, etc. Then second, in each region focus on a very small number of very interesting aspects. Things we, the audience, would likely never learn about otherwise.
So what we get are, for a few examples, frogs that live at high elevation and die each night by freezing, then thaw back alive the next day. Or hummingbirds with two very long tail feathers, doing its mating dance. Or a duck that has special armor on its legs so that it can dive and feed safely in very hot water.
My own favorite is the piece on the red land crabs of Cuba. At the right season millions of them come out of the ground in the forest, find a mate, incubate for 14 days, then make the several mile trek to the sea to disperse their billions of eggs. A few thousand don't make it across the coastal highway when big vehicles come along but there are so many it hardly makes a dent in the numbers.
Each episode has things, fascinating things, that we would likely never be exposed to otherwise. The script is interesting and humor is injected occasionally at opportune times. And the photography is stunning.
The last episode is a "making of" presentation, showing behind the scenes how the teams were able to track down and capture the video they did. It is fascinating in its own right.
We normally watch the weekly episode streaming on Peacock, the commercials are fewer and easier to handle.
