Series featuring animals with “humanlike” behaviours, the social network of macaques and uncharted shark highways are among Love Nature’s latest greenlights for its slate of original series and documentaries ahead of MIPTV.

The Blue Ant Media-owned natural history content brand will premiere the eight titles, produced by a range of international prodcos, in 2023 and 2024 on Love Nature channels around the world. The projects will also air on Sky Nature in the U.K., Germany and Italy.

Love Nature’s new slate is headed by the channel’s SVP of production and development, Alison Barrat. Blue Ant International will oversee licensing opportunities for most of the new titles outside of commissioning territories, according to a news release. The distributor previously unveiled its sales slate for MIPTV, which will take place in Cannes, France from April 17 to 19.

The slate includes the previously-announced Deep in the Heart (pictured), produced by Texas-based prodco Fin and Fur Films and narrated by actor Matthew McConaughey.

Bristol-headquartered Off the Fence Productions is the prodco behind Jaguar Journals with Lizzie Daly (working title) and Enchanted Forest (w/t). Jaguar Journals (5 x 60 minutes) follows the eponymous wildlife biologist and TV personality as she joins groundbreaking monitoring projects that uncover new insights into the behaviour of animals. Enchanted Forest (6 x 60 minutes), meanwhile, shines a spotlight on the woodland ecosystems that play a vital role in sustaining life on Earth. Off the Fence established an office in Toronto in 2021.

Singapore-based Beach House Pictures-produced Macaque Island (3 x 60 minutes) is a look at the complex social structures of macaques against the backdrop of Singapore’s growing urban population and the devoted conservationists working to preserve the species. The series combines footage shot in the region’s Bukit Timah Nature Reserve with the stories of three tribes of long-tailed macaques.

Daly also leads the audience on a road trip across Australia in U.K.-based Big Wave Productions’ Deep Down Under (3 x 60 minutes; w/t), which celebrates Australia’s diverse marine life and the scientists working to preserve it.

The diversity and mysteries of the underwater world also make up the storylines of Beasts of the Big Blue (6 x 60 minutes), produced by New Zealand’s NHNZ Worldwide for TVNZ and Love Nature, and narrated by New Zealand actor Rachel House, and Super Shark Highway (6 x 60 minutes) by Australia’s Breakout Productions, about a world-first research expedition along the unexplored migration routes of sharks.

Animals Like Us (6 x 60 minutes) from U.K.-based Pioneer Productions explores “how seemingly human animals can be,” including how octopuses dream, elephants grieve their dead, wolves miss each other, and dolphins communicate what they want to eat.

Image courtesy of Love Nature