Animal Park

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

Title screen
Presented by Kate Humble
Ben Fogle (2001—)
Paul Heiney (2000)
Theme music composer Simon May
Country of origin United Kingdom
Original language(s) English
No. of series 10
No. of episodes 205
Production
Location(s) Longleat Safari Park
Running time 1560 minutes
Production company(s) BBC, Endemol UK
Release
Original network BBC One, BBC Two
Original release Original series:
10 July 2000 (2000-07-10) – 25 March 2009 (2009-03-25)
Revived series:
22 August 2016 (2016-08-22) – present
Chronology
Preceded by Lion Country
Related shows Animal Park: Wild In Africa
Animal Park: Wild On The West Coast
External links
Website

Animal Park is a BBC television documentary series about the lives of keepers and animals at Longleat Safari Park, Wiltshire, England.

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 have been 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

It mainly focuses on 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 late tiger 'Kadu', the late rhinos 'Babs' and 'Winston', and Europe's oldest silverback gorilla, 'Nico', who celebrated his 50th birthday in 2011.[2]

Lord Bath, owner of the Longleat estate, regularly appears 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.[3] 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.[4]

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.[5] 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.

Transmissions

# Episodes Start Date End Date Channel
1 10 10 July 2000 21 July 2000 BBC One
2 10 9 July 2001 20 July 2001
3 25 7 May 2002 26 August 2002
4 25 23 February 2004 26 March 2004 BBC Two
5 25 6 September 2004 13 October 2004
6 15 22 August 2005
7 15 21 August 2006
8 10 7 January 2008
9 15 5 January 2009 25 March 2009
10 5 22 August 2016 26 August 2016 BBC One

References

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 9/17/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.