Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Greta Thunberg: A Year To Change The World’ On PBS And Hulu, Where The Teenage Climate Activist Gives Her Message Around The World

The three-part docuseries Greta Thunberg: A Year To Change The World, which premieres on PBS and Hulu on Earth Day, documents the year that teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg took off from school in 2019-20 to tour the world. While that year got cut off because of the COVID-19 pandemic, her aim was to not only send out her forceful message about climate change, but also see places where climate change has effected the ecosystem or taken a human toll.

GRETA THUNBERG: A YEAR TO CHANGE THE WORLD: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A shot of Greta Thunberg walking through a forest. “This year, the world’s best known climate activist, Greta Thunberg, turned 18,” says narrator Paul McGann.
The Gist: The intention was for Thunberg to take a year off of high school and travel the world, but the COVID-19 pandemic scuttled those plans. But we start in October, 2019 in Alberta; Thunberg and her father Svante, driving in a borrowed Tesla, go to Edmonton so she can give a speech during a Climate Strike protest. During her speech, which she works on meticulously in the hotel room, she talks about how countries who agreed to the Paris climate accords aren’t doing anything to reduce emissions, as they promised. In the situation we are now, the world will blow through its “carbon budget,” the total emissions that will keep global temperature increases under 1.5 degrees C, in less than ten years.
From Edmonton, where her speech is greeted with cheers but a fair share of protestors who know how much oil means to the economy in Alberta, she travels to Jasper National Park. There, she sees the damage that pine beetles have done to the trees there; temperatures haven’t gotten cold enough in the winter over the last decade to kill the beetles, so they’ve thrived. Then they go to the Athabasca Glacier, which has shrunk tremendously in the past 40 years, not only due to warming temperatures, but also due to soot from wildfires that prevents the ice from reflecting as much light as it used to.
On their way to Santiago, Chile, where she’ll give a speech at a UN climate conference — Thunberg refuses to fly — she gives a speech during a Los Angeles Climate School Strike protest, then visits the town of Paradise, which almost got wiped out by the massive Camp wildfire in 2018. When the conference is moved to Madrid because of protests in Santiago, the Thunbergs head east, and hope they can get a boat to sail them across the Atlantic. Twenty days in a catamaran, where they faced stormy weather but also some peaceful days in vast blue ocean, Greta and her father land in Lisbon and make their way to Madrid by train.
In Madrid, Thunberg gives a speech that’s different than the emotional, forceful ones she’s been given since she first came to global attention in 2018; she thinks people should hear facts about the urgency we’re under instead of the emotion, especially now that millions of people already follow her, for better or worse.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? It’s not a stretch to say that Greta Thunberg: A Year To Change The World is a sequel of sorts to I Am Greta. Here, we do get a little more insight into her personality via interviews with Greta and her father.
Our Take: Before you watch this new docuseries, you need to put everything you may think about Thunberg aside. Whether you think she’s right on the money or too young to be telling countries what to do, you’ll get more out of the viewing experience if you remove whatever preconceived notions you have about her before hitting “Play.”
Once you do that, you can see that Thunberg is an engaging presence, whether she’s speaking to the interviewer, her father, a massive crowd or an expert one-on-one. You don’t see many teenagers as focused as she is, and the personal glimpses we get from her, like her father saying that he’d stand behind her no matter what, or Thunberg admitting that, as a person with autism, the crowds and noise she’s attracted give her sensory overload, only speak to how dedicated she is to this cause.
Despite the fact that the pandemic cut the number of filming days way down, it still feels like we’re just getting the highlights of Thunberg’s tour. When she traveled across the U.S. after the conference was moved from Chile to Spain, for instance, did she make any stops along the way to make speeches or tour sites? It feels like, for such an important mission, the things had to be cut down too much in order to fit into 3 total hours.

There will be segments made during the early days of the pandemic and the shutdowns it generated. What we’d like to see is Thunberg struggling to get her message to people who are suffering because of COVID or the financial strife created by the lockdowns. It’s still a critical message, to be sure, but it’s was likely a whole lot tougher to get out there when people around the world have more immediate things to deal with.
Parting Shot: Thunberg goes back to Sweden to take a holiday break, and we see her hugging her mother and her dog.
Sleeper Star: Svante Thunberg, without a doubt. He admits his role is just being the “supportive father,” and he knows that this is what Greta wants to do with her life right now. Most parents wouldn’t have the patience he has. But he also recognizes the power in Greta’s message and the movement she’s sparked.
Most Pilot-y Line: None.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Not only does Greta Thunbrerg: A Year To Change The World reinforce the young activist’s forceful language about climate change, it shows some glimpses into her motivation and drive, as well.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

Stream Greta Thunberg: A Year To Change The World On PBS.org

Stream Greta Thunberg: A Year To Change The World On Hulu