Airdate: Boy to Man

Next week BBC Knowledge premieres a new 12-part series Boy to Man, with Australian adventurer Tim Noonan on a quest to discover what it means to become a man.

Noonan is his own producer, reporter and cameraman, travelling the world capturing remote and inaccessible people and places.

For 12 months Tim travels the globe to immerse himself in unique native cultures and experience the most extreme and dangerous coming-of-age rituals. Tim endures ancient ceremonies, bloody initiations and gruelling tests of manhood to be accepted as man of each tribe. What’s more he films it all himself.

The series begins in Siberia with Tim venturing to the far reaches of the Arctic Circle to make contact with a little-known clan of reindeer people to become a man of the tundra. These remote clans have hardly changed in millennia, having little or no contact with the outside world. They depend on their giant reindeer herds for everything; from clothing to food, tools, transport and shelter. To complete the sacred manhood ritual of the Nenets reindeer nomads, Tim must kill what he loves to survive. 

Wednesdays at 8.30pm from February 1 on BBC Knowledge.