Meerkat Manor is a British television documentary produced by Oxford Scientific Films that premiered in September 2005. Originally broadcast on Animal Planet International for four seasons, until its cancellation in August 2008, the programme had a revival in 2021 with the programme now known as Meerkat Manor: Rise of the Dynasty in some countries. Using traditional animal documentary style footage along with narration, the series told the story of the Whiskers, one of more than a dozen families of meerkats in the Kalahari Desert 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 original programme was narrated by Bill Nighy, with the narration redubbed by Mike Goldman for the Australian airings and Sean Astin for the American broadcasts. The fourth series, subtitled The Next Generation, saw Stockard Channing replacing Astin as the narrator in the American dubbing. In 2021, Nighy could be heard narrating the new series of Meerkat Manor when it was broadcast in the United States on BBC America and on Channel 5 in the United Kingdom, making it the first time that both television markets have used the same voice over on the programme.
Meerkat Manor premiered in the United Kingdom on 12 September 2005, and the first 13-episode series concluded on 24 October 2005. With the success of the programme in the United Kingdom, Animal Planet started broadcasting it on its national channels in Australia, Canada, and the US. It has since been rebroadcast in more than 160 other countries. The fourth, and final, Animal Planet series aired initially in the United States from 6 June 2008 to 22 August 2008. In August 2009, it was reported that the programme had been cancelled by Animal Planet. In 2021, Meerkat Manor returned to British TV screens with a new series subtitled onscreen as Rise of the Dynasty (as Channel 5 listed the programme just as Meerkat Manor). The 13-part series was again narrated by Nighy, and was shown by Channel 5 every weekday in the 6.30pm slot usually featuring quiz show Eggheads, with the last episode going out on Wednesday 15 December 2021.Radio Times 11–17 December 2021, Channel 5 listings for Wednesday 15 December 2021 page 90 The Rise of the Dynasty series was made by Oxford Scientific Films (with the master rights belonging to BBC America) and featured three mobs of meerkats, with the groups being given the names Whiskers, Hakuna Matata and Ubuntu.
Although the show faced criticism from viewers for not intervening when a meerkat was injured and faced death, Meerkat Manor enjoyed considerable success and was Animal Planet's top series in October 2007, both on the cable channel and through its video-on-demand service. The show's experimental format broke new ground in animal documentary filming techniques and gave viewers a long-term, intimate look into the lives of its meerkat stars, breaking the traditional wall between viewer and subject found with most documentaries. Meerkat Manor was nominated for three Primetime Emmy Awards: two in 2007 and one in 2008. It won awards at the 2006 Omni Awards, and at the 2006 and 2007 New York Festivals TV Broadcasting Awards. The first three series have been released to DVD in both Region 1 and Region 2. In 2007, a book entitled Meerkat Manor – The Story of Flower of the Kalahari was released in the UK, detailing the life of Flower and the Whiskers before the series' filming began. A television film, Meerkat Manor: The Story Begins, documenting Flower's birth and rise to matriarch of the Whiskers, aired on Animal Planet on 25 May 2008. A photo-realistic theatrical animated feature film based on the series is in development at Warner Bros. Pictures Animation as of April 2024.
Production details
Meerkat Manor was created by Caroline Hawkins, executive producer and series editor at Oxford Scientific Films, and commissioned for Animal Planet International by executive producer and commissioning editor Mark Wild. Filming for a 13-episode series took seven to eight months, and was limited to the Kalahari spring and summer seasons, as meerkats are less active during winter. Series three was filmed from November 2006 through April 2007, and Series four began filming in October 2007. Most scenes were filmed on location at the Kuruman River Reserve, where the Kalahari Meerkat Project that the meerkats are a part of is based. However, the meerkats seen in commercials and on the show's website were not the same animals portrayed in Meerkat Manor. Instead, tamer-rescued meerkats from the Fellow Earthlings' Wildlife Center were filmed against a green screen.
The show was primarily filmed using Sony DSR-570 cameras, although special equipment was needed for some unique footage. For scenes inside the animals' burrows, mini fibre-optic infra-red cameras were employed; wide-angle shots were filmed with a seven-metre crane and a remote-controlled camera platform. An off-camera wireless microphone was also used to record many meerkat vocalizations, only partially audible to cameras' on-board systems. Most filming was done by a single cameraman and a single sound engineer; researchers have required a minimal human presence to avoid stressing the animals. Eye-level shots were difficult to achieve at times, due to the meerkats' small size and the limited height of even the smallest tripods.
For tracking purposes by the researchers, the dominant female of each group is fitted with a radio collar, as are some dominant and roaming males. The meerkats – especially younger animals – are marked with dye to differentiate them. As the meerkats are habituated, they would tend to ignore the camera crew as long as their "personal space" was respected.
National variations The UK and US versions of the show have the same content for most episodes; however, the latter was sometimes edited for length to allow for commercial breaks. Content was also sometimes altered; mating scenes in particular were often removed from the US version. Animal Planet US occasionally changed the names of meerkats and episode titles. Two of Flower's pups were renamed from Ren and Stumpy to Len and Squiggy; the title of the episode was also changed. De la Soul (named for the rap group of the same name), one of the sisters who started the Starsky group, was renamed Whoopi in the US as a tribute to actress Whoopi Goldberg, an early fan of the series. Animal Planet US has also renamed some of Flower's pups born in series three after two other celebrity fans of the show, Elizabeth Taylor and Denis Leary. Several episodes were renamed: the title of the final episode of the second series was changed from "The Killing Fields" to "The Quiet Fields". During the third series, the third episode's title was changed from "Something's Got to Give" to "Sister Act" (another Goldberg reference), while the sixth episode's title changed from "The House of Zappa" to "Sibling Rivalry".
Narrative
The show follows several groups of meerkats, who act communally for the benefit of the groups in which they live. These groups are typically led by a dominant female and male, who maintain almost exclusive rights to have offspring. The group followed most closely is known as the Whiskers family. This group was chosen because of its matriarch Flower, an unusually successful dominant female who led the group for five years. During series three, Flower died from a snake bite and was succeeded by her daughter Rocket Dog.
Animals in neighbouring groups were highlighted in each series as well. In the first series, a group called the Lazuli were shown frequently in competition with the Whiskers family, and the opening credits referred to them as the "neighbours from hell". Although their dominant male Big Si died between series, the Lazuli appeared in the second series, mostly as a source of roving males. Another group called the Commandos, led by a one-eyed male named Hannibal, introduced themselves by attacking the Lazuli burrow, killing a pup and badly wounding the babysitting adult. The Commandoes became the new major rivals in the area, killing the pups of evicted Whiskers female Mozart and taking over some of the Whiskers' territory.
The Whiskers' new neighbours were the Zappa and the Starsky. Although smaller than the Whiskers, the Zappa attacked frequently, and when they fled after one attack, the Whiskers – in a rare occurrence – adopted an abandoned Zappa pup. The Starsky group, on the other hand, was no threat to the Whiskers. Formed by a trio of Flower's daughters permanently evicted from the Whiskers, the small group was ravaged by illness, predators, and a lack of new pups. The constantly struggling Starsky succumbed in the penultimate episode, with the death of the last survivor, Mozart, who was killed by a jackal. Former Whiskers female Maybelline broke away from the group at the end of the third series, forming a new group called the Aztecs which became the Whiskers' rivals in the fourth series.
Changes in representation
While the show portrays real events among the Kalahari Meerkats, it also removes repetitive elements of the animals' lives. Because many days are filled with behaviour related to grooming and foraging, these routines were often left out of the show in favour of more unusual events.
The meerkats are all named by Kalahari Meerkat volunteers; the individual who first sees a new litter emerge from the burrow is awarded naming rights. This has produced a variety of names, frequently drawn from volunteers' favourite books, movies, musical groups, family and friends, historical figures and geographical locations. Animal Planet sometimes renamed the meerkats for narration, arguing that researchers' names were too limited, often relating to spices and food condiments. Because of these changes, fans of the series who seek information on the Friends of the Kalahari Meerkat Project website sometimes have trouble locating particular animals. The project has created a list of alterations to help viewers connect the animals on the show to their real-life counterparts, and to match episodes to the monthly KMP Life History reports. The list, however, is only available to paying members of their website.
Two of the major Whiskers family rivals were composites, created with footage and blended stories from multiple groups. For example, the Commandos group on the show uses some of events from the real Commandos group, but was primarily shown with footage from the Vivian research group – including its dominant couple. Similarly, the show's Zappa group was mostly presented using footage from a group called "The Young Ones" (named after the British television show); however, the actual story and dominant pair were from the real Zappa Group. Axel, the abandoned pup from series three, has a research number that indicates he was probably a Young Ones pup, rather than being a Zappa as the show claims.
Reception