8 /10 1 Votes
Theme music composer Simon May Original language(s) English No. of episodes 205 First episode date 10 July 2000 | 7.9/10 IMDb Country of origin United Kingdom No. of series 10 Location(s) Longleat Safari Park Networks BBC One, BBC Two | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Presented by Kate Humble, Ben Fogle, Paul Heiney Cast Ben Fogle, Kate Humble, Paul Heiney | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Animal Park is a BBC television documentary series about the lives of keepers and animals at Longleat Safari Park, Wiltshire, England.
Contents
Main series
The first series of Animal Park, originally broadcast in 2000 on BBC One, was presented by Kate Humble and Paul Heiney. 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.
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. 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.
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. 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. In February 2017, Fogle tweeted that the eleventh series would be filming shortly.