Favorite TV show as a child.

CheeseChameleon1945

CheeseChameleon1945

Well-Known Member
5+ year member
I know this really isn't zoo related at all, but I'm feeling a little nostalgic today so why don't you join us.

Planet earth:
Now I know this isn't really a TV show, but I have to mention it because this BBC earth documentary series really is responsible for sparking a light of wonder in my brain to open up to the natural world.
Its one that I was immersed in as a child, and I was so divulged into David Attenborough's world going from place to place and seeing these incredible animals. Its a childhood classic.

Now, on to the actual TV shows.

Thomas the Tank engine:
Do note that this is the older stop-motion series, not the new CGI version. This ones a little cheesy, and usually aimed for the really young demographic but It was one of my favorites. I guess I really liked all the characters, and the atmosphere in general. I think especially in the night scenes the production team had a lot of creative camera choices and lots of natural elements and music used here. Such fun!
Also, the Narrator. Oh wow, his voice was like music to my ears. When He talked, I listened.

Scooby doo: This one I have to admit I still put on occasionally. I absolutely love this series, and especially love the Mystery incorporated series 2011-2013. Really good and worth a watch on Netflix.
I always loved the classic late 60's animation, and the fact that the setting was almost always nighttime made it a lot more enjoyable.

Thats pretty much my favorites, whats yours?
 
Onychorhynchus coronatus said:
Did you happen to see the episode where the vampire bat escaped ? ( I read about it in the Morris autobiography and it was hilarious)
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Like you, I read about the escaping vampire bat in Desmond Morris's autobiography although, frustratingly, I have no recollection of watching that particular episode.

I must have seen almost every episode of Zoo Time: if I missed an episode when it was first screened, then I probably watched it when the series was repeated. If I'd seen the vampire bat programme, I think I would remember it, so suspect this must be one of the few I missed.

However it was about sixty years ago and I was only a very small child at the time so it's possible did see it and have subsequently forgotten.

Incidentally, another of my very favourite TV programmes from my childhood was On Safari (with Armand and Michaela Dennis).
 
Tim May said:
Like you, I read about the escaping vampire bat in Desmond Morris's autobiography although, frustratingly, I have no recollection of watching that particular episode.

I must have seen almost every episode of Zoo Time: if I missed an episode when it was first screened, then I probably watched it when the series was repeated. If I'd seen the vampire bat programme, I think I would remember it, so suspect this must be one of the few I missed.

However it was about sixty years ago and I was only a very small child at the time so it's possible did see it and have subsequently forgotten.

Incidentally, another of my very favourite TV programmes from my childhood was On Safari (with Armand and Michaela Dennis).
Click to expand...

Well, you are right, it was televised a long time ago and you were a child when it was so it is no suprise really that you cannot remember it but it would have been wonderful to see wouldn't it ?

I imagine a lot of children with their eyes glued to the family television set must have thought that Desmond and the cameraman had been attacked by a vampire / Dracula or something like that.

The way he describes the event in the book is hilarious and I think Morris must actually have a brilliant and very dry sense of humour in his personal life.
 
I liked Space Patrol. I've been watching the programmes on Youtube. It is set in 2100, but was made in 1962. The computers are very old-fashioned reel-to-reel machines using tickertape. I doubt if the interplanetary machines will exist in 2100.
 
I was quite lucky that when I was growing up, it wasn’t unusual for several series about animals to be running on television concurrently and there were often wildlife-based programmes designed for young people. It certainly helped feed my interest in the natural world.

Probably the main group of shows from my childhood were those made by Dorling Kindersley – they had three major series, all for a different age group. I tended to watch these on VHS, as the shows were either televised when I was too young to appreciate them or on channels we didn’t have. The first series was See How They Grow, which were comprised of four roughly ten-minute parts that showed the life-cycle of an animal that was narrated by Johnny Morris (as an example, the episode called ‘Insects and Spiders’ shows the growth of butterflies, ladybirds, locusts and spiders). These were definitely intended for quite young children.

For the next age group came Amazing Animals, which was televised only on the Disney Channel so wasn’t one I saw a huge amount of. It featured a CGI gecko and a narrator that would interact throughout the course of the episode, along with hand-drawn animated characters. The episodes also all featured live animals filmed in a studio along with clips from other wildlife documentaries.

The last of the three series, and the one I enjoyed the most, was Eyewitness. These were adaptations of the very successful book series of the same name and ran for three seasons. Each episode has a specific theme, generally based on either natural history or earth science. All episodes are based in a CGI museum that has small windows where clips from other wildlife documentaries are shown and has studio-filmed animals moving through the space; the series is narrated by Andrew Sachs. A lot of animals were filmed in studio settings for this series – I re-watched all of the episodes a couple of months ago and ended up listing 205 species in total.
All three of these Dorling Kindersley series are available in some capacity online.

The Really Wild Show was something I watched frequently when I was growing up. It was actually a programme we often watched together in our house (I remember my mum, for instance, doing something in her school back when she was a teacher about dancing sloth bears after she saw it in one episode). Unfortunately, I tend not to remember more than snatches of certain episodes but looking back through the episode guides, I can see that there are definitely ones I would want to re-watch – there is even one episode that looks around the zoos of California, which must be an interesting watch. Unfortunately, I cannot find full episodes of more recent series available anywhere.

The third major series of my childhood was the ‘Serious…’ franchise. This was a set of eight different series that all followed a basic formula. In it eight young people (ages 12-15) were selected to go on an extreme adventure in a remote part of the world where they would also partake in some kind of conservation work – often there would be building work involved (such as creating a remote platform for orangutan rehabilitation in Borneo, creating a pre-release enclosure for spectacled bears or building a breeding enclosure for rescued red uakaris). While the animals are not the main focus (it is probably closer to a reality show) they still played an important role in almost all the series. Certainly the second of the eight series (called Serious Desert) introduced me to the desert-adapted black rhinoceros and so directly inspired my username here. All eight series are available online.

I vividly remember having a couple of 1996 episodes of Wildlife on One recorded on VHS – the episodes in question were ‘Hippos Out of Water’ and ‘Stoats in the Priory’. I have recently found these two episodes, together with 126 other episodes of this series, have been uploaded onto the internet:
BBC Wildlife On One (David Attenborough) (1977-2005) : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
 
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Animal Magic! Johnny Morris is a legend! Sadly I am too young to have seen the Desmond Morris programme first hand!
 
I too grew watching Animal Magic, I was also enjoyed Zoo 2000, the Survival series, Wildlife On One, Life on Earth and, although not zoo related, The Flame Trees of Thika
 
pipaluk said:
Animal Magic! Johnny Morris is a legend! Sadly I am too young to have seen the Desmond Morris programme first hand!
Click to expand...

What a memory. however, if we are both old enough to remember 'the legendary' Johnny Morris we are very much old enough just now! I can still remember his commentary and animal voice overs, just brilliant. Mostly filmed at Bristol Zoo I think too. Did Terry Nutkins join him in later years, or was that another program?

On another note, as a kid I enjoyed Rainbow and Mr. Benn. They where well weird, probably why I am what I am today...:)
 
As most of the animal lovers, zooboomafoo has always been a favourite of mine too. I can also remember some memorable brazilian ones, such as "Dr. Selvagem" (reality show about zoo veterinarians filmed at Sorocaba zoo. By the way, have you heard about this one, @Onychorhynchus coronatus ?), "Mundo selvagem" and other realities by biologist Richard Rasmussen. Always enjoyed both veterinary shows by Dr. Pol and Dr. K's too.

Outside the animal world, I have to admit I used to be really adicted to the telenovelas and brazilian celebrity Hebe Camargo's talk show.
 
Pootle said:
What a memory. however, if we are both old enough to remember 'the legendary' Johnny Morris we are very much old enough just now! I can still remember his commentary and animal voice overs, just brilliant. Mostly filmed at Bristol Zoo I think too. Did Terry Nutkins join him in later years, or was that another program?
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I always much preferred "Zoo Time" with Desmond Morris to "Animal Magic" with Johnny Morris but watched the latter too.

Indeed "Animal Magic" was largely filmed at Bristol Zoo but sometimes other zoos were featured too. I remember one early episode visited the Jardin des Plantes Menagerie in Paris and, when doing the voice-overs, Johnny Morris had all the animals "talking" with a French accent.

Yes Terry Nutkins joined the cast of "Animal Magic" towards the end of the series.

EDIT

See the link below for a compilation of various snippets from "Animal Magic" including the elephants "Wendy" and "Christina" in Bristol Zoo and "Siam" at Vincennes Zoo, Paris.

 
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Zoo Time was amazing and I used to love the programmes, they had a great influence and I can remember them well. They were of course presented by Desmond Morris a polymath who spanned the gap between art and science. He is still alive and in his nineties and now apparently lives in Ireland. He wrote many original and very thought provoking books, that demonstrate the breadth of his thinking.
 
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I really enjoyed watching the Schlesinger Media documentaries, specifically the Animal Life in Action and Animal Life for Children series. Now they definitely bring some nostalgia.
 
DesertRhino150 said:
I was quite lucky that when I was growing up, it wasn’t unusual for several series about animals to be running on television concurrently and there were often wildlife-based programmes designed for young people. It certainly helped feed my interest in the natural world.

Probably the main group of shows from my childhood were those made by Dorling Kindersley – they had three major series, all for a different age group. I tended to watch these on VHS, as the shows were either televised when I was too young to appreciate them or on channels we didn’t have. The first series was See How They Grow, which were comprised of four roughly ten-minute parts that showed the life-cycle of an animal that was narrated by Johnny Morris (as an example, the episode called ‘Insects and Spiders’ shows the growth of butterflies, ladybirds, locusts and spiders). These were definitely intended for quite young children.

For the next age group came Amazing Animals, which was televised only on the Disney Channel so wasn’t one I saw a huge amount of. It featured a CGI gecko and a narrator that would interact throughout the course of the episode, along with hand-drawn animated characters. The episodes also all featured live animals filmed in a studio along with clips from other wildlife documentaries.

The last of the three series, and the one I enjoyed the most, was Eyewitness. These were adaptations of the very successful book series of the same name and ran for three seasons. Each episode has a specific theme, generally based on either natural history or earth science. All episodes are based in a CGI museum that has small windows where clips from other wildlife documentaries are shown and has studio-filmed animals moving through the space; the series is narrated by Andrew Sachs. A lot of animals were filmed in studio settings for this series – I re-watched all of the episodes a couple of months ago and ended up listing 205 species in total.
All three of these Dorling Kindersley series are available in some capacity online.

The Really Wild Show was something I watched frequently when I was growing up. It was actually a programme we often watched together in our house (I remember my mum, for instance, doing something in her school back when she was a teacher about dancing sloth bears after she saw it in one episode). Unfortunately, I tend not to remember more than snatches of certain episodes but looking back through the episode guides, I can see that there are definitely ones I would want to re-watch – there is even one episode that looks around the zoos of California, which must be an interesting watch. Unfortunately, I cannot find full episodes of more recent series available anywhere.

The third major series of my childhood was the ‘Serious…’ franchise. This was a set of eight different series that all followed a basic formula. In it eight young people (ages 12-15) were selected to go on an extreme adventure in a remote part of the world where they would also partake in some kind of conservation work – often there would be building work involved (such as creating a remote platform for orangutan rehabilitation in Borneo, creating a pre-release enclosure for spectacled bears or building a breeding enclosure for rescued red uakaris). While the animals are not the main focus (it is probably closer to a reality show) they still played an important role in almost all the series. Certainly the second of the eight series (called Serious Desert) introduced me to the desert-adapted black rhinoceros and so directly inspired my username here. All eight series are available online.

I vividly remember having a couple of 1996 episodes of Wildlife on One recorded on VHS – the episodes in question were ‘Hippos Out of Water’ and ‘Stoats in the Priory’. I have recently found these two episodes, together with 126 other episodes of this series, have been uploaded onto the internet:
BBC Wildlife On One (David Attenborough) (1977-2005) : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
Click to expand...
I also watched the Eyewitness series.
 
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