Wild At Heart Tames The Restless Soul
I’m not sure what it is about the Brits, but they know how to make good television. I grew up watching Benny Hill on the local independent TV station, then graduated to Monty Python, Doctor Who, and what I believe is the funniest TV show ever produced, Fawlty Towers. Thanks to technology I haven’t watched an American network show in years, and with Amazon Prime and Netflix Streaming I have seriously cut back my American cable reality TV viewing to just a few shows. Instead of watching yet another navel-gazing reality show at night, thanks to Amazon Prime we watch Ballykissangel, a comedy/drama set in a fictitious town near the Wicklow mountains in Ireland. It also allowed us to catch up with Downton Abbey. Over the summer we burned through Doc Martin, one of the quirkiest and addictive shows we’ve seen in years about a GP living in a small town on the Cornish coast (I’m saving the last 4 episodes of the last season like a treat to be savored only on special occasions).
We discovered the show Wild At Heart somewhat by accident during a Netflix streaming test drive. The show stars Ballykissangel’s Stephen Tompkinson as Danny Travanian, a vet from Bristol whose wife, played by Amanda Holden, decides to take their blended family on a trip to South Africa to release a vervet monkey brought into her husband’s surgery. While there they are convinced by the owner of a small game reserve to invest their life savings into the park and stay.
Tomkinson and co-star Bovril
The show is a delight for animal lovers and for Africa lovers. It is almost entirely filmed in South Africa as is evident by the light. Anyone who has lived in Africa knows the lighting there is different, likely due to the continent’s elevation and dust in the air, and the warmth the light provides the scenes makes Africa as much a character in the show as the animals or the actors. The stories are well written and the characters grow over time. For example in the early episodes Danny’s daughter Rosie is an annoying suburban girl, and his stepson Ethan is an emo kid you want to slap and send to military school, but by the third season each has evolved into a well-rounded and interesting character to the point when Ethan leaves Leopard’s Den, the fictitious game park, you really are sad to see the kid go. But as anyone who grew up watching British TV knows like Blake’s 7 or Red Dwarf knows, the Brits are much less averse to knocking off characters than Americans, and Wild at Heart is no different, so if you are interested in the show do yourself a favor and avoid reading anything containing spoilers.
Don’t let the “family show” moniker I’ve seen used to describe Wild at Heart put you off. One of the main characters, Anders Du Plessis (played by Deon Stewardson) the owner of Leopard’s Den, is a South African wild man who drinks to excess and won’t be appearing at an AA meeting anytime soon. Wildlife conservation in Africa is not easy, and the show pulls no punches about that. Money is always a problem. Corruption is rampant, and Nature is not pretty. Things die, often in brutal ways, and the show doesn’t sugarcoat this reality. Yes there is no sex shown (at least between humans) but it does get bloody at times, especially during an unforgettable lion attack that was filmed so expertly that it’s one of the more savage things I’ve seen. I don’t think the kids will sleep well after seeing it; at least I didn’t.
Wild at Heart was canceled last year after a 7 season run, supposedly because ITV, the network behind the show ran into financial difficulties producing a Titanic remake. Worse, Netflix Streaming will be dropping the show when a licensing arrangement ends on October 15, 2013, although the first season is available on Amazon Prime and on DVD. All other seasons are available only on Region 2 DVD, meaning they will not play on North American market DVD players.
But I doubt this will be the last we’ve seen of the show. What pet owner has never dreamed of shooing a cheetah off their bed, or having a family of elephants playing in their front yard? The world is a very desolate and at times hopeless place, but for 46 minutes you can lock it in a cage and release your inner hominid to roam freely across the African savannah once more.
Chad:
Don’t forget, “Call the Midwife” if you haven’t seen it yet.
5 October 2013, 12:15 pmWild Mike:
Tomkinson is a great actor and one that is very overlooked. Should be more popular in my opinion. Great little tv show also.
17 February 2014, 6:17 am