Chester Zoo "OUR ZOO"

Glad we weren't the only ones that spotted Jim Clubb in with the big cats, I guessed amazing animals probably supplied the animals for the show.

Does anybody know if any other uk based animal training companies like amazing animals have open days during the year? I have only heard of a few other companies in general that do this kind of thing and I guess that amazing animals is the largest?
 
I liked it, and don't really care about inaccuracies. It's a drama after all, and has to appeal to the license paying public....not just a few elitists on ZooChat! :D

Reminded me of the TV adaptation of My Family and Other Animals, which was another one I loved.
 
Episode Two did of course air on Wednesday evening... A much more realistic portrayal of events, and very much mirroring the second chapter of 'Reared in Chester Zoo', Janice Madden's biography of June Williams.
 
Shirokuma said:
How true was the scene with the bears?
Click to expand...

True but for the chips and the illness of the female, pretty much.

[quote='Reared in Chester Zoo' by Janice Madden] The family heard about the horrendous problem of extricating the two bears from a cave where they had been kept. It was barred but visitors could look in at the captives. Both had grown so large that they could hardly stand up and visitors no longer wished to see them. The female bear was captured and crated very quickly but the mistrusting and troubled male resisted any attempts and refused to come out of the cave. It took three days and nights of hard work to secure him, but these bears became the first arrivals at the new zoo.[/quote]
 
Panthera1981 said:
Sorry guys, for those of us not in the know, who's Jim Clubb?

Finally watched it-very enjoyable. According to the website, the zoo's opening the house for guided tours.
Click to expand...

Mr. James Clubb joined Chipperfields Circus after leaving school as an apprentice wild animal trainer and later presented almost every animal act on the Chipperfield show. He married the youngest daughter of Mr.Dick and Mrs. Myrtle Chipperfield, Sally, and in 1978 took out there own circus, Sally Chipperfields which they ran on tour until 1981. Mr. Clubb trained several excellent cage acts in the eighties including a mixed group of leopards, black panther, jaguar and snow leopard and after tenting with their own circus supplied animal acts to other circuses as well as providing animals for film and television work including the B.B.C. television series "One by One", based on the vet David Taylor's work with zoo and exotic animals. In the nineties Mr. and Mrs. Clubb built the Heythrop Zoological Garden at their base in Chipping Norton, the former winter quarters of Chipperfields Circus, including giraffe house, polar bear pool and big cat enclosures, reptile house etc. and a very good place it is too.
 
Animal Friendly said:
Mr. James Clubb joined Chipperfields Circus after leaving school as an apprentice wild animal trainer and later presented almost every animal act on the Chipperfield show. He married the youngest daughter of Mr.Dick and Mrs. Myrtle Chipperfield, Sally, and in 1978 took out there own circus, Sally Chipperfields which they ran on tour until 1981. Mr. Clubb trained several excellent cage acts in the eighties including a mixed group of leopards, black panther, jaguar and snow leopard and after tenting with their own circus supplied animal acts to other circuses as well as providing animals for film and television work including the B.B.C. television series "One by One", based on the vet David Taylor's work with zoo and exotic animals. In the nineties Mr. and Mrs. Clubb built the Heythrop Zoological Garden at their base in Chipping Norton, the former winter quarters of Chipperfields Circus, including giraffe house, polar bear pool and big cat enclosures, reptile house etc. and a very good place it is too.
Click to expand...

In the early years the animal training company was known as "Clubb-Chipperfield" before it became "Amazing Animals", at the time it was seen as a sensible change to move away from the name Chipperfield due to the Mary Chipperfield and Roger Cawley incidents in court etc..
But I for one regard Jim Clubb as a first class animal trainer, who is very well respected, his particular forte has always been big cat and bear training, and he is still probably the best in the UK with regard to that.
 
OK, two episodes in and I think it's time to comment on the accuracy so far. I know it's a drama, and "based on" ... but even so I think the discrepancies should be duly noted. The zoo's own website and facebook page is full of claims that it tells "the story of the founding of our zoo", and the BBC version will doubtless be seen by many as definitive in some way.

My view is that there are four areas where the programme is inaccurate, and to keep posts to a reasonable length I will deal with them separately. I will italicise my summary observations on each.

AREA A - minor technical points, often for purely practical purposes: - Walton Hall stands in for Oakfield; Alderley Edge for Matlock; a Squirrel Monkey for a Gibbon; the bear species as noted above.

No problem with this.

AREA B - Changes of sequence, dramatic effect.
AREA C - The personalities involved.
AREA D - Significant discrepancies.

For B to D see below! :)
 
AREA B - Changes of sequence, dramatic effect.

Examples that I have noticed:-

I do not think Oakfield was bought at auction - "Reared in Chester Zoo" p.4 suggests it was bought by private treaty. So no last-minute dramas as portrayed in the series (with or without Muriel's excursion to Liverpool - another invention? And see below.).

Another cliffhanger, the Squirrel Monkey facing a gory end at the hands of village yokels, seems to be an invention.

GSM (George Saul Mottershead) was not with the family when they moved in; he was in Matlock rounding up bears (see p.5 of RiCZ).

The version of the securing of the Matlock bears is very different from that described in RiCZ - certainly no suggestion of their being led through public woodland to be loaded like a couple of Saddleback pigs!

There were local objections from the very start, and GSM certainly didn't conceal his plans. The week the family moved in the press reported that GSM was "opening a zoo" at Oakfield.

And so on, and so on ...

Does any of this matter? Probably not, though I'm unsure why they felt it necessary to alter so much of the story.
 
AREA C - the personalities involved.

One assumes that June Williams is happy with the treatment of her family! I can claim no particular knowledge - I spoke to GSM on one occasion, but have also spoken with a few people who knew him and the zoo(s) - both Shavington and Chester - in the late 1920s/ early 30s.

June and Albert seem to be very much as portrayed in RiCZ. I'm not sure about Lizzy. There's something about the depiction of George himself which doesn't seem quite right to me, but it'll be interesting to see how this develops in the next four episodes.

Muriel and Lucy seem ill-served.

Muriel comes over as a stock "moody teenager" with little or no interest in the zoo venture. RiCZ paints a very different picture - "'Dad will make it happen. He has already described to me how it will be ... a zoo without bars ... surrounded by beautiful gardens'" (p.9); "Mew had become the first zookeeper. She cleaned out the cages every day, fed the animals and gave them fresh drinking water" (pp.13/14).

Lucy comes over as a stock "interfering mother-in-law", despite the comment in RiCZ that "June never heard either of them [her g/parents] complain".

 
and finally,

AREA D - the significant discrepancies.

The main point here is that the Shavington Zoo is ignored by the series. Which will cause difficulties in Episode 3 if they try to deal with the Planning Inquiry! A key feature of GSM's case to the Inquiry was that "he had lived in Crewe for eleven years, and several years before had established an aviary and zoological gardens within a residential area of Shavington" (p.20) without causing difficulties!

The implication that GSM's weakness for animals brought a family business (i.e. his parents') to its knees is also incorrect. The business was GSM's, and the animal link strengthened the business by attracting customers! He had a shop in Crewe, a market garden property in Shavington at which he developed a zoo, and the move to Upton was the result of falling-out with his business partner in the Shavington zoo venture.

I really don't understand why there has been such an effort to change the background to the venture at Upton, and to portray GSM in such an inaccurate light. To write out significant characters, such as Dr Willie English his Shavington partner, but create characters who - I suspect - didn't exist, such as Lizzie's brother may be good "drama" but it is NOT the history of the creation of Chester Zoo!
 
I can understand members who are most familiar with what exactly happened and how the script at times deviates from actual facts, but the B.B.C. are very happy with the viewing figure of five million for the first episode and a second series set during the second world war is highly likely.
 
I think some people need to chill a bit. It's a TV programme! Things have to be changed so that (a) it's filmable, and (b) people will actually want to watch it!
 
mrcriss said:
I think some people need to chill a bit. It's a TV programme! Things have to be changed so that (a) it's filmable, and (b) people will actually want to watch it!
Click to expand...
I think the reason some people are getting a bit worked up,is because to many people this will become the fact of how Chester Zoo was born,when in fact it is very different!Yet another case of TV and Film re-writing history to make what they think is a better story!!!Personnaly I think the true story was worth sticking to instead of the version being shown on the telly,the only good thing that can be said is that Amazing Animals made some serious money from this filming,so I hope for that reason alone a second series is done!
 
mrcriss said:
I think some people need to chill a bit. It's a TV programme! Things have to be changed so that (a) it's filmable, and (b) people will actually want to watch it!
Click to expand...

That's fine. But I assume some people on here would like to know how accurate the depiction is in Our Zoo. Having spent a lot of time a few years ago researching the history of Shavington Zoo, even getting the opportunity to speak with people who worked/ visited there (who are sadly no longer alive), I'm in a position to comment.

Of course, nobody is under any obligation to read my comments if they're not interested. ;)
 
zoogiraffe said:
I think the reason some people are getting a bit worked up,is because to many people this will become the fact of how Chester Zoo was born,when in fact it is very different!Yet another case of TV and Film re-writing history to make what they think is a better story!!!Personnaly I think the true story was worth sticking to instead of the version being shown on the telly,the only good thing that can be said is that Amazing Animals made some serious money from this filming,so I hope for that reason alone a second series is done!
Click to expand...

But what you're forgetting is that however many million of the viewers it received aren't Zoochatters. Nor do they actually care if it's the real story or not. Nor will they even remember it in a week or two!

It's a telly show....a bit of fluff. It's not trying to or going to rewrite the annals of history.

Also, Auntie Beeb has to work within fairly tight budgetary constraints. So if a few locations are changed, or if the story is exaggerated in places, it was done so that they would be able to make the best telly programme possible. I think that they, having had decades of experience, know slightly better what makes a good programme than some purists that insist upon historical accuracy.
 
mrcriss said:
But what you're forgetting is that however many million of the viewers it received aren't Zoochatters. Nor do they actually care if it's the real story or not. Nor will they even remember it in a week or two!

It's a telly show....a bit of fluff. It's not trying to or going to rewrite the annals of history.

Also, Auntie Beeb has to work within fairly tight budgetary constraints. So if a few locations are changed, or if the story is exaggerated in places, it was done so that they would be able to make the best telly programme possible. I think that they, having had decades of experience, know slightly better what makes a good programme than some purists that insist upon historical accuracy.
Click to expand...
I will say know more as it is going to be a pointless discussion if I did,but if you are happy with this becoming the true story in the future,then so be it!Just remember it was the British that capture the first German Enigma Machine,and not the Americans but many think it was the Americans thanks to Hollywood!!!
 
The true story of the zoo could have been told by the zoo itself, instead they have chosen to ignore their heritage.

Colchester did a greeat job of celebrating their 50th anniversary, what has Chester done for the 80th anniversary of the NEZS. nothing.

Miss Russell-allen's plaque is not even on view, and she was chairman of the society for many years.

The factual innacuracies of the story don't matter, it is not fact, it is fiction based on fact.
 
zoogiraffe said:
I will say know more as it is going to be a pointless discussion if I did,but if you are happy with this becoming the true story in the future,then so be it!Just remember it was the British that capture the first German Enigma Machine,and not the Americans but many think it was the Americans thanks to Hollywood!!!
Click to expand...

Hahahaha.....seriously? A silly little programme is not going to "become the true story in the future". Do you know why? 'Cos no-one away from this forum actually cares about the origins of Chester zoo! You can hardly compare it in importance to events that led to victory in WW2!:D

Nor is it a TV show so spectacular that it deserves awards, gasps, and massive critical acclaim.....it's just a bit of fluff with charming northerners and cuddly animals! No one is really going to remember this and talk about it for years to come
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top