Meerkat Manor

Meerkat Manor
Meerkat Manor logo
Genre	Nature, documentary, drama
Created by	Caroline Hawkins[1]
Narrated by	Bill Nighy (UK/Canada) Mike Goldman (Australia) Sean Astin (USA)
Country of origin	UK
Language(s)	English
No. of series	3
No. of episodes	40 (List of episodes)
Production
Executive producer(s)	Mark Wild (UK) Simon Willock (OSF) Clare Birks (OSF) Mick Kaczorowski (US)
Producer(s)	Chris Barker Anne Sommerfield Lucinda Axelsson Renoir Tuahene
Editor(s)	Caroline Hawkins[1] Renoir Tuahene Amanda Young
Location(s)	Kalahari Desert
Cinematography	Robin Smith Gavin Thurston John Brown
Camera setup	Multi camera
Running time	24 minutes
Broadcast
Original channel	Animal Planet International
Picture format	PAL
Audio format	Surround sound
Original run	September 12, 2005 – Present
External links
Official website
IMDb profile
TV.com summary

Meerkat Manor is a British television show made by Oxford Scientific Films for Animal Planet International. It blends the traditional animal documentary with dramatic narration to tell the story of the Whiskers, a family of meerkats in the Kalahari Desert. The Whiskers are one of over a dozen groups of meerkats 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 show was originally shown in the UK, its country of origin, but was subsequently picked up in Australia, Canada, and the US, and is now broadcast in more than 160 countries.^[2] It is narrated by Bill Nighy in the United Kingdom and Canada, Mike Goldman in Australia, and Sean Astin in the United States. The third series began airing in the United States on August 10, 2007, in the UK on September 10, 2007, and in Canada on October 3, 2007. Because of different broadcasting schedules, the UK run of new episodes ended well before the US and Canadian runs. In the UK, a new episode was aired every weeknight, while in the US and Canada, new episodes were shown weekly, on Friday and Wednesday respectively.

The meerkats

Main article: List of Meerkat Manor meerkats

The show portrays several meerkat groups, whose members act communally for the benefit of their respective groups, and which are typically led by a dominant female and male, who maintain almost exclusive rights to have offspring. The Whiskers family group is the primary focus of the show. This group was chosen because of its matriarch Flower, an unusually successful dominant female who led the group for five years.^[3][4] During series 3, Flower died from a snake bite and was succeeded by her daughter Rocket Dog.^[5][6] In addition to the Whiskers, one to two of the Whiskers' neighboring groups are focused on as well.^[6] In series 1, the Lazuli were the main rivals for the Whiskers. They continued to appear in series 2, after the death of their dominant male, Big Si, but are relatively absent in series 3. Series 2 saw the introduction of the Commandoes, led by the one-eyed male Hannibal. They take over some of the Whiskers territory and continue to be fierce rivals throughout series 2 and 3. In series 3, two more groups are introduced, the Zappas and the Starsky. Though smaller than the Whiskers, the Zappas still cause them some trouble, especially after the Whiskers steal some of their territory. The Starsky group was formed by several female meerkats that had been evicted from the Whiskers by the dominant female Flower. The group struggled to survive throughout the series, and the last member died in the next-to-last episode of series 3.^[7]

Production details

Meerkat Manor was created by Caroline Hawkins, executive producer and series editor at Oxford Scientific Films^[1], and commissioned for Animal Planet International by executive producer and commissioning editor Mark Wild.^[8]. Filming for a 13 episode series takes seven to eight months weeks, with filming being limited to the Kalahari spring and summer seasons, as the meerkats are less active in the winter.^[9][6] Series 3 was filmed from November 2006 through April 2007, and Series 4 began filming in October 2007.^[3] The majority of scenes are filmed on location at the Kuruman River Reserve. However, the meerkats seen in the commercials and on the website promoting the show are not the actual Meerkat Manor meerkats. Instead, the film crew went to the Fellow Earthlings Wildlife Center, a meerkat rescue center, where tamer meerkats were filmed against a green screen.^[10] The show is primarily shot using Sony DSR570 cameras^[11], however special equipment is needed to achieve some of the never-before-seen footage on the show. Burrow scenes are achieved using mini fiber-optic infra-red cameras, while wide-angle shots are done using a seven-meter crane with a remote-controlled camera platform.^[12] An off-camera microphone that wirelessly sends a signal back to the camera is used to record the many vocalizations of the meerkats being filmed, which the camera's on-board system couldn't fully capture.^[11] Due to the restrictions of to the researchers and to avoid stressing the meerkats, most filming is done by a single cameraman and a single sound person interacting with the meerkats.^[6] It is sometimes a struggle to get eye-level shots, due to the small size of the meerkats and the height of even the smallest tripods.^[11] To track each group, the dominant female of each group is fitted with a radio collar, as are some dominant and roaming males. The meerkats are marked with dye to help tell them apart, particularly the younger meerkats.^[6] As the meerkats are habituated, they are used to having a human presence around and will usually ignore the camera crew as long as their "personal space" is respected.^[11] 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. It was also nominated for a 2007 Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival Award for Best Original Score.

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 believed to be the first to capture meerkat infanticide on film.^[12] Unlike many documentaries, which maintain an emotional distance while detailing some aspects of the subjects' lives, the extended length of Meerkat Manor, its soap-opera-like narration, the romanticization of the meerkats' lives, and the close-up filming techniques of the show bring nature closer to viewers.^[13] Viewers get more emotionally involved in the lives of the meerkats, sometimes forgetting they are watching a documentary, only to be harshly reminded that meerkats frequently live short lives and often have brutal deaths. It is an experimental form that pushes the envelope of both the nature documentary genre and the nature of reality TV.^[14]

Like the meerkats, Manor is an odd beast. The crew is forbidden to intervene, and the producers don't sugarcoat the animals' less cuddly habits (infidelity, abandonment of young, occasional cannibalism). But the meerkats are named and given human traits ("courageous," "caring," "bully[ing]"), and their antics and tragedies take place over a sound track. Manor is both brutal and melodramatic and thus more devastating than most documentary or scripted drama.

—James Poniewozik, Time Magazine, November 2, 2007^[15]

Differences between UK and US episodes

For most episodes, the UK and US versions are the same; however the US version of the show is sometimes edited for length to allow for more commercial breaks and for content, such as the removal of mating scenes. There have also been several instances where Animal Planet US has changed the names of meerkats or changed an episode title. In Series 3, Episode 5, Flower's new pups had their names changed from Ren and Stumpy to Len and Squiggy, respectively, with the change also reflected in the episode title. The sixth episode of Series 3 was renamed from "The House of Zappa" to "Sibling Rivalry." In Series 3, Episode 11 ("Three Degrees of Separation"), the meerkat De la Soul is renamed Whoopi.

Differences between Meerkat Manor and the real meerkats

While the show mostly tells the true story of the Kalahari Meerkats, Animal Planet often renames the meerkats during the narration as they felt it wouldn't be good to have a show with all the meerkats named after spices and food condiments.^[6] The renaming can, however, make it difficult for fans to look up information on the meerkats at the Kalahari Project site. The Friends of the Kalahari Meerkat Project has made information to help people tie the Meerkat Manor meerkats to their real-life counterparts and to tie the episodes to the real KMP reports, however the information is currently only available to paid members of their web site.^[16] Two of the major rivals of the Whiskers are actually filmed using a combination of footage from multiple groups and a blending of their stories. For example, the Commandoes group on the show uses some of the facts about the real Commandoes group, but it is primarily filmed using the Vivian research group and the Commandoes dominant couple is actually from the Vivian group.^[17] In a similar fashion, the Zappa group in the show is mostly filmed using a group called the "The Young Ones";^[17] however, the actual story and dominant group are from the real Zappa Group.^[4] Axel, the abandoned pup from series 3, has a research number that indicates he is probably a Young Ones pup rather than being a Zappa as he is called on the show.^[18]

Reception

Meerkat Manor has been well received by viewers and critics alike. It is currently Animal Planet's top series, with more than four million viewers.^[19] The viewership of the on-demand video offerings for Meerkat Manor grew 20% in September 2007, in response to Discovery offering all of the third series episodes, recaps of series one and two, top 10 moments from the series, and a memorial sequence for Flower.^[20] Building on the success of Meerkat Manor's unique format, Animal Planet has developed a similarly formatted show entitled Orangutan Island, which will focus on a group of orphaned orangutans at the Nyaru Menteng Orangutan Rescue and Rehabilitation Center.^[21] Oxford Scientific Films is also producing another "animal soap" focusing on lemurs that is also slated to be aired on Animal Planet International.^[22]

Criticism

Some fans have criticized the show for its non-interference policy with regards to the meerkats, asking why the film crew and researchers do not give anti-venom to snake-bitten meerkats or otherwise try to aid those who have been injured, or euthanize those that are dying and suffering.^[19] Executive Producer of the US version Mick Kaczorowski pointed out that Meerkat Manor is a show about the real life lives and deaths of the meerkats. The research group has policies against interceding in natural events "because they don't want to have an effect on the gene pool by saving a weaker meerkat [or] affecting the outcome of what's natural in the Kalahari." The only exception made to this rule is that the researchers will euthanize meerkats that contract tuberculosis in order to prevent outbreaks that would threaten both the meerkat population and the cattle of nearby human residents.^[3]

Merchandise

A feature film entitled Flower: Queen of the Kalahari is in production by Oxford Scientific Films for Discovery Films that will be a prequel to the Meerkat Manor series. ^[23]. In particular, the film will document Flower's early life as she grows from an inexperienced young meerkat to rise to become one of the most successful leaders of the Whiskers clan.^[24] A book written by Professor Tim Clutton-Brock entitled Meerkat Manor - Flower of the Kalahari (ISBN 0-297-84484-9) was released in the UK and US on October 4th, 2007.^[25] The primary focus of the book is the life of Flower and the Whiskers, including tracing how the Whiskers started, providing a timeline of Flower's life, and detailing all of the pups she had over her lifetime, and where they are now. The book also gives more in-depth information on how the Kalahari Meerkat Project started, the research goals and results so far, and what the life of the researchers is like. 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. The game will be released on multiple platforms with a projected release in late 2008.^[26]

References

External links

• Meerkat Manor at Animal Planet (US)
• Meerkat Manor at Animal Planet UK
• Meerkat Manor at Animal Planet Canada
• The Kalahari Meerkat Project
• Friends of the Kalahari Meerkat Project