“Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered.” So said WH Auden in The Dyer’s Hand, and I’ve always felt the same way about popularity, especially enduring popularity. Because being famous is hard – you try it – and to pull it off takes a mystical kind of popular appeal, a chord played in a special key that thousands if not millions of people find they can sing along with.
With that in mind, there was a very quiet silver jubilee celebration in show-business last month. The television series Animal Park was first broadcast 25 years ago. No – I didn’t notice either. It’s a daytime series, set around the Longleat Safari Park in Wiltshire on the Marquess of Bath’s Longleat estate.
The BBC has actually been getting content out of this place for almost 60 years – it first broadcast The Lions of Longleat in 1967, a year after the seventh Marquess opened the park, presumably to help support himself through the 95 per cent supertaxes of the first Wilson government. But Animal Park itself, presented by Ben Fogle and Kate Humble, kicked off a proud quarter of a century ago, a classically defined generation, getting it into Last of the Summer Wine territory. And it is broadcasting a special series to mark the occasion, looking back on its finest moments. I thought anything that had survived the schedules that long was worth a go.
Nature programming is the pride and joy of the BBC, but, safe to say, this isn’t exactly Attenborough. For one, it’s not taken any wild sleuthing or local knowledge to track down these animals – they’re kept in pens. And, short of the occasional slow-motion hummingbird wing shot, there’s no experimental cinematography. Instead, you get very sweet and very light stories about the animals, animals which are all given affectionate Christian names and so can be anthropomorphised, Disney-style.
So, meet Malaika the lion, one of the series’ longest-serving characters. She was born on the park in 2005, an adorable little cub; she died earlier this year, having become the Regina of the pride. Then there’s Buster the seal – “a massive character”, Ben Fogle assures us. And there are other major figures to be memorialised, including the park’s departed gorilla: “The loss of Nico – who could ever forget that?” Fogel asks. (I watched on, embarrassed, having never known Nico in the first place.)
Fogel, for his part, will have enjoyed the flashbacks to earlier series: when he was young, he looked like a young Prince William; now he is old, he looks like the older Prince William wishes he could look. And in the background of the animals’ circle of life is another human cast. Fogel and Humble are unremittingly genial with each other, despite their 25 years of mutual exposure, though admittedly their job is mostly confined to saying things like “oh my goodness” and “that is incredible”. In the background, popping up as a cameo character, is the eighth Marquess, Ceawlin Thynn (who himself has an oddly leonine appearance). And then there’s a platoon of park keepers, orderlies and paramedics, who muck in with sincere enthusiasm, whether they’re feeding meal worms to meerkats or collecting lion shit for fertiliser.
Animal Park has its bursts of Reithian didacticism, and I actually learned quite a bit. When a leading lioness dies, the remaining pride roar together at the exact moment their comrade’s heart stops. Silverbacks are so named because their fur actually turns steely grey when they become the dominant member of their troop. Ancient Egyptians believed that dung beetles rolling poo-balls around the Sahara mirrored the passage of the sun across the sky.
As someone in employment, I don’t watch much daytime television. I’m not sure even today’s Neets do either: in the age of Netflix libraries, they’re freed from the tyranny of the TV listings. And I’ll probably never watch Animal Park ever again, nor think about it much either. But I’m oddly reassured by its existence. A mutually beneficial partnership between the business dealings of an old patrician family and the BBC, it feels like it could be 100 years old, not 25. It’s fuzzy, pointless, endearing and numbing television – you can imagine it making the century.
Animal Park
BBC One
[Further reading: Ali G isn’t funny any more]
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This article appears in the 29 Jul 2026 issue of the New Statesman, The new terror
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