Everything about Meerkat Manor totally explained
Meerkat Manor is a British
television programme produced by Oxford Scientific Films for
Animal Planet International. Blending more traditional animal
documentary style footage with
dramatic narration, the series tells the story of the Whiskers, one of over a dozen families of
meerkats in the
Kalahari Desert being studied as part of the
Kalahari Meerkat Project, a long-term
field study into the ecological causes and evolutionary consequences of the cooperative nature of meerkats. The original programme is narrated by
Bill Nighy, with the narration redubbed by
Mike Goldman for the
Australian airings and
Sean Astin for the American broadcasts.
Meerkat Manor premiered in the
United Kingdom on
September 12,
2005, and the first 13-episode series concluded on
October 24,
2005. With the success of the programme in the UK, Animal Planet started broadcasting it on its national channels in Australia, Canada, and the US. The series is now available in more than 160 other countries. Three series have aired in their entirety, and the fourth series is scheduled to premiere in the United States on
June 6,
2008. The fourth series, which will be subtitled
The Next Generation will see
Stockard Channing replacing Sean Astin as the narrator in the American dubbing.
Although the show faced criticism from viewers for not intervening when a meerkat was injured and faced death, as a whole
Meerkat Manor has enjoyed considerable success and is now Animal Planet's top series, both on the cable channel and through its video-on-demand service. The show's experimental format broke new ground in animal documentary filming techniques and allowed viewers a long term, intimate look into the lives of its meerkat stars, breaking the traditional wall between viewer and subject found with most documentaries.
In 2007,
Meerkat Manor was nominated for two
Primetime Emmy Awards. It has won three awards at the 2006 Omni Awards, and at the 2006 and 2007 New York Festivals Award Galas. All three series of the programme have been released to DVD in both
Region 1 and
Region 2. In 2007, a book entitled
Meerkat Manor - The Story of Flower of the Kalahari was released in the UK, detailing the life of Flower and the Whiskers before the series filming began. A television film,
Meerkat Manor: The Story Begins documenting Flower's birth and rise to matriarch of the Whiskers aired on Animal Planet on
May 25,
2008.
Production details
Meerkat Manor was created by Caroline Hawkins, executive producer and series editor at Oxford Scientific Films, and commissioned for
Animal Planet International by executive producer and commissioning editor Mark Wild. Filming for a 13-episode series takes seven to eight months, and is limited to the Kalahari spring and summer seasons, as meerkats are less active during winter. Most scenes are filmed on location at the Kuruman River Reserve, where the
Kalahari Meerkat Project that the meerkats are a part of is based. However, the meerkats seen in commercials and on the show's website are not the same animals portrayed in
Meerkat Manor. Instead, tamer rescued meerkats from the Fellow Earthlings Wildlife Center are filmed against a
green screen.
The show is primarily filmed using
Sony DSR570 cameras, although special equipment is needed for some unique footage. For scenes inside the animals'
burrows, mini
fiber-optic infra-red cameras are employed; wide-angle shots are filmed with a seven-meter crane and a remote-controlled camera platform.
For tracking purposes, the dominant female of each group is fitted with a radio collar, as are some dominant and roaming males. The meerkats – especially younger animals – are marked with dye to differentiate them. Animal Planet US has also renamed some of Flower's pups born in season three to honor two other famous fans of the show,
Elizabeth Taylor and
Denis Leary. The group followed most closely is known as the Whiskers family. This group was chosen because of its matriarch Flower, an unusually successful dominant female who led the group for five years. During series three, Flower died from a snake bite and was succeeded by her daughter Rocket Dog.
Animals in neighbouring groups are highlighted in each series as well.
The Whiskers' new neighbours were the Zappa and the Starsky. Although smaller than the Whiskers, the Zappa attacked frequently, and when they fled after one attack, the Whiskers – in a rare occurrence – adopted an abandoned Zappa pup. The Starsky group, on the other hand, was no threat to the Whiskers. Formed by a trio of Flower's daughters permanently evicted from the Whiskers, the small group was ravaged by illness, predators, and a lack of new pups. The constantly struggling Starsky dissipated in the penultimate episode, with the death of the last surviving member, Mozart, who was killed by a
jackal.
Changes in representation
While the show portrays real events among the Kalahari Meerkats, it also removes repetitive elements of the animals' lives. Because many days are filled with behavior related to grooming and foraging, these routines are often left out of the show in favor of more unusual events.
The meerkats are all named by Kalahari Meerkat volunteers; the individual who first sees a new litter emerge from the burrow is awarded naming rights. This has produced a variety of names, frequently drawn from volunteers' favorite books, movies, musical groups, family and friends, historical figures and geographical locations.
Reception
Meerkat Manor has been well received by viewers and critics alike. It is currently Animal Planet's top series, with an audience of more than four million in the United States alone. The viewership of the
on-demand video offerings for
Meerkat Manor grew 20% in September 2007, when Discovery offered each third series episode, video capsules of series one and two, top ten moments from the show, and a memorial sequence for Flower. Building on the success of
Meerkat Manor's unique format, Animal Planet commissioned two similarly formatted programmes:
Orangutan Island, which focuses on a group of orphaned
orangutans at the Nyaru Menteng Orangutan Rescue and Rehabilitation Center, and
Lemur Street, which looks at the lives of two rival gangs of
ring-tailed lemurs in
Madagascar.
Meerkat Manor was nominated for two
Primetime Emmy Awards in 2007: one for "Outstanding Cinematography for Nonfiction Programming" and one for "Outstanding Picture Editing for Nonfiction Programming".
Impact on the genre
Meerkat Manor's innovative new methods of filming allowed the Kalahari Project scientists a chance to uncover aspects of meerkat life never before seen, including life within the burrows. The film crew is also the first to capture meerkat
infanticide on film.
While many documentaries maintain an emotional distance from their subjects,
Meerkat Manor – due to its extended length, soap-opera-like narration, romanticization of the animals' lives, and close-up filming techniques, provides a closer, more personal view of the meerkats. Viewers describe being emotionally involved in the animals' lives, sometimes forgetting they're watching a documentary. The meerkats' frequently short lives and brutal deaths become surprising and disturbing to some audiences. This experimental format is seen as expanding the boundaries of both the nature
documentary genre and the nature of reality TV.
Criticism
Some fans have criticized the show for its non-interference policy with regard to the meerkats, asking why the film crew and researchers don't give
anti-venom to snake-bitten meerkats, or
euthanize those dying and suffering. The book focuses on Flower's life and the story of the Whiskers, tracing how the group started, providing a timeline of Flower's life, and detailing all of the pups she'd over her lifetime, as well as their current locations. The book also gives more background on how the Kalahari Meerkat Project started, the research goals and results, and researchers' personal lives. A
paperback edition of the book has been announced for release in the United States by
Simon & Schuster through their Touchstone imprint on
April 15,
2008. The US release will be titled
Meerkat Manor: Flower of the Kalahari (ISBN 1-4165-8767-5).
Discover Communications has partnered with
Activision to make a video game based on
Meerkat Manor as the first in a new series of nature-based games. It will be released on multiple platforms, with release projected for late 2008.
Film
Oxford Scientific Films produced a feature film for Discovery Films that acts as a
prequel to the
Meerkat Manor series. Originally announced as
Flower: Queen of the Kalahari,
Meerkat Manor: The Story Begins was directed by Chris Barker and Mike Slee and narrated by
Whoopi Goldberg. The film was introduced at the 2008
Tribeca Film Festival in the Spotlight section, and then aired in the
United States on
Animal Planet on
May 25,
2008 as a lead into a thirty-minute
Making of Meerkat Manor: the Story Begins special. On
May 30,
2008, another half-hour special
The Science of Meerkat Manor is scheduled to air. The seventy-five minute film is scheduled to be released to
Region 1 DVD on
June 3,
2008.
The film included re-edited footage and a new musical score. The Whiskers story is simplified some, with the
Lazuli being the only rival group to appear in the film. Unlike with the
Meerkat Manor series, the film doesn't actually depict any of the real Whiskers meerkats. Untrained "meerkats actors" play the role of Flower and her family, with the camera crew searching out appropriately aged meerkats, then following them until the meerkats acted in a way that was needed for the film. Flower herself is depicted by approximately eight female meerkats.
In an early review, a
Variety magazine reviewer notes that the film while the film had nothing new versus the television series, it praised the lack of commercials and continued extraordinary cinematography the series is well known for. Goldberg's narration was noted to be of better quality than most documentaries, and the film stars were considered to be "addictively adorable animals".
Further Information
Get more info on 'Meerkat Manor'.
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