Nat Geo returns to Mars

Nat Geo scripted/unscripted hybrid series Mars from Ron Howard

National Geographic Channel has renewed its big-budget drama series Mars, from producers Ron Howard and Brian Grazer, for a second season.

The series, which focuses on a fictitious crewed mission to the Red Planet and is set in 2033, mixes drama footage with documentary-style cutaways and is part of an ambitious “fewer, bigger, better” content strategy under Nat Geo’s CEO Courteney Monroe.

The first six-part season, from Imagine Entertainment and Radical Media, premiered on Nat Geo worldwide in November last year.

The renewal was unveiled at Nat Geo’s TCA presentation in the US where it also revealed a new project to adapt David France’s book How To Survive A Plague: The Inside Story of How Citizens and Science Tamed AIDS into a scripted miniseries.

France will executive produce alongside Scott Rudin as the show charts the rise of the underground drug movement in opposition to prohibitively expensive and often toxic AIDS medication through the 1980s.