new television series, expected to begin in January 2016. Channel 4 commissions The Secret Life of Chester Zoo - Prolific North
Starting 2nd February 8pm. The Secret Life of the Zoo press pack - Channel 4 - Info - Press Dr Gerardo Garcia interview for The Secret Life of the Zoo - Channel 4 - Info - Press
With a certain ZooChat favourite lurking in the publicity shot! Will we see the return of Tim's white board?
Summary so far: 4 weeks in, very impressed so far (quietly hoping it will get a 2nd series) Episode one (02/02/2016) - Birth of elephant calf, Nandita. Meerkats, Red Pandas and Chimps Episode two - (09/02/2016) - Tigers move to Islands, Sun Bears arrival, Montserrat Tarantula breeding, Penguins Episode three (16/02/2016) - Birth of Giraffe, Kidepo. Aarvarks, Mountain Chicken Frog reproduction Episode four (23/02/2016) - Komodo Dragon feeding, Arrival of Zebra mare from West Midlands and the re-introduction of stallion Mac, Elephant herpes and Naked Mole Rats
Am enjoying this series very much. After the sad EEHV story featured tonight, I was pleased to hear there are two pregnant elephants in the herd
I'm loving the Series ... very sad about Hari and Bala , was dreading this being shown , hopefully it will make more people aware of the Virus and not keep blaming Zoo's for it happening when it's a worldwide Virus ... Let's hope there will be a cure in the near future ... But it;s also very good news that two are pregnant and hoping they along with Nandita they will free from this Looking forward to the rest of the Series and hoping they do another one
In yesterday's episode, the inevitable question was asked by the (off-camera) TV person: 'Wouldn't the animals be better off in the wild?' I suppose the keeper was caught unprepared, but I wish he'd given a more robust response than falling back on the old 'In an ideal world...' argument. No world could be ideal, as far as I'm concerned, if there were no zoos in it. Of course, they'd all be very good zoos. The program is showing the expected taxonomic bias: - if you're a bird other than a penguin, don't expect to get screen-time - if you're a fish other than a dead fish being fed to a penguin, don't expect to get any screen-time But at least the Montserrat Tarantulas and Mountain Chicken Frogs have had their five minutes of fame!
I think the penguins were overdone last night. There are so many species at Chester to choose from, yet I felt I was watching almost identical penguin scenes to those in recent series about other zoos. The programme makers need to use more imagination. But, at last, orangs feature next week!
Meh, being a bird-nerd I didn't mind the Penguins too much, at the start of the series I was wondering if they would even show birds (or even the popular penguins) at all, as I thought every week might just be elephants, tigers, giraffes and the other "popular" zoo animals. That being said, it was silly how it was dramatised with the Penguins last night - the juvenile penguin on his own for a whole two hours?! Oh no! What would the average C4 viewer rather see? A cute baby elephant or a Mountain Chicken...?
The series has been a little guilty of over dramatising, the penguins was one example and the tigers move was another. They tend to focus on one species for rather too long, in an hours programme and many other species to choose from.
Must admit I was hoping for something different to the normal repeated old species and information and guess what no can do sorry but have switched off on this series as all I can see is same old reliable audience figure grabbing stuff.
I'd love to see whatever you've been watching in order to count Montserrat Tarantula, Mountain Chicken and Sunday Gharial among "normal repeated old species"
Autocorrect: another reason False gharial is still a better name (though I do like Tomistoma - that has a ring to it)
I share most of the frustration that other people have expressed in this thread. The only advance that this series has made is the use of GoPro type cameras, which have provided some interesting moments. I wish there were fewer talking heads in all those keeper interviews: couldn't they have used the keepers' voices as commentaries over footage of action from time to time? I also think they could have shown more of the keepers at work, including keeping records, refurbishing enclosures and, of course, shovelling ****. In particular I think they missed an opportunity in the second show, it seemed that the sun bears moved into the old tiger enclosure as soon as the tigers were in their crates, it would have taken a couple of minutes to show the checks and changes that were made before the bears could move in. The business of making sure that an enclosure suits the animals is surely worth showing. I am hoping that some of the work on Islands will be shown eventually. Alan
