Animal Park

Animal Park is a BBC television documentary series about the lives of keepers and animals at Longleat Safari Park, Wiltshire, England. The show is currently presented by Kate Humble and Ben Fogle, who replaced Paul Heiney in 2001. Jean Johansson has been a co-presenter since 2016.

This article is about the television documentary. For animal parks in general, see Zoo.

Animal Park
Title screen
Presented byKate Humble
Ben Fogle (2001—)
Paul Heiney (2000)
StarringJean Johansson (2016—)
Theme music composerSimon May
Country of originUnited Kingdom
Original language(s)English
No. of series11
No. of episodes170
Production
Production location(s)Longleat Safari Park
Running time15–60 minutes
Production company(s)BBC, Endemol UK
Release
Original networkBBC One, BBC Two
Original releaseOriginal series:
10 July 2000 (2000-07-10) – 25 March 2009 (2009-03-25)
Revived series:
22 August 2016 (2016-08-22) –
present
Chronology
Preceded byLion Country
Related showsAnimal Park: Wild In Africa
Animal Park: Wild On The West Coast
External links
Website

Main series

The first series of Animal Park, originally broadcast in 2000 on BBC One, was presented by Kate Humble and Paul Heiney.[1] In series two, Heiney was replaced by Ben Fogle. Altogether, there were nine series and 205 episodes of Animal Park, with the last episode originally airing on 25 March 2009.

The forerunner to Animal Park was a BBC One series called Lion Country, also filmed at Longleat Safari Park, which aired in 1998 and 1999 with a total of 55 episodes.

Content

Programmes show the animals, keepers, and day-to-day running of the safari park. Some of the animals captured the hearts of the viewing public, including the tiger 'Kadu', rhinos 'Babs' and 'Winston', and Europe's oldest male silverback gorilla, 'Nico'.

Lord Bath, owner of the Longleat estate, appeared regularly in the show. Animal Park also documents the running of Longleat House and the ongoing preservation of its historic contents.

Spin-offs

There have been two spin-offs from the main series. Animal Park: Wild in Africa was originally broadcast in 2005 on BBC Two.[2] Set in Namibia, it documented the work of wildlife conservationists.

Another spin-off, Animal Park: Wild on the West Coast, had a similar format in California, and was originally broadcast in 2007 on BBC Two.[3]

2016 revival

In 2016, the BBC announced that Animal Park would return for a tenth series to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Longleat Safari Park.[4] This series aired for five episodes in August 2016 in a daytime slot. The show was renamed Animal Park: Summer Special and was presented by Kate Humble and Ben Fogle with Jean Johansson as a reporter.

An eleventh series was broadcast in 2017. Five episodes aired during Easter, with a further ten airing during the summer.[5]

Animal Park: Summer Special, series twelve, was aired in August 2018.[6] Episode 3 celebrated the life of the gorilla 'Nico', who died in January 2018 at the age of 56.[7][8] Episode 7 featured wildlife photographer Will Burrard-Lucas, who used his remote-control BeetleCam to take a series of close-up photographs of the animals.[9]

Transmissions
SeriesStart DateEnd DateEpisodesChannel
110 July 200021 July 200010BBC One
29 July 200120 July 200110
37 May 200226 August 200225
423 February 200426 March 200425BBC Two
56 September 200413 October 200425
622 August 20059 September 200515
721 August 20068 September 200615
87 January 200820 January 200810
95 January 200925 March 200915
1022 August 201626 August 20165BBC One
1110 April 201711 August 201715
126 August 201824 August 201815
135 August 201923 August 201915

Some episodes from series six and eight have been re-edited into 15, 25, 30 and 45 minute programmes to be repeated and used as schedule fillers.

References
  1. "Animal Park - BBC One London - 20 July 2000". BBC Genome. Retrieved 7 November 2015.
  2. "Animal Park - Wild in Africa - BBC Two England - 5 April 2005". BBC Genome.
  3. "Animal Park: Wild on the West Coast - BBC Two England - 23 July 2007". BBC Genome.
  4. "Take part in Animal Park series 10". BBC. Retrieved 9 May 2016.
  5. Murray, Robin (3 March 2017). "Animal Park to return to Longleat with new major series". Wiltshire Times. Retrieved 27 June 2017.
  6. Archer, Kate (5 August 2018). "When is Animal Park Summer Special on? Who are the presenters? Where is it filmed?". BT TV. Retrieved 8 August 2018.
  7. "Animal Park Summer Special 2018 - episode 3" at BBC Programmes
  8. "Nico the Gorilla". Longleat. 9 January 2018. Retrieved 9 August 2018.
  9. "BeetleCam gets bug's eye view of Longleat's Big Four". Retrieved 31 August 2018.
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