Meerkat Manor

Synopsis

Meerkat Manor is a British television programme produced by Oxford Scientific Films for Animal Planet International that premiered in September 2005 and ran for four series until its cancellation in August 2008. Blending more traditional animal documentary style footage with dramatic 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.

First Air Date: 2005-09-02

Last Air Date: 2008-08-22

Number of Seasons: 4

Number of Episodes: 52

Created By: Caroline Hawkins

Networks: Animal Planet, Animal Planet

View Technical Specifications on IMDb

Top Cast

Bill Nighy as Narrator
Stockard Channing as Narrator
Sean Astin as Narrator

Seasons

Specials (2008) - (1 Episodes)

Season 1 (2006) - (13 Episodes)

Season 2 (2006) - (13 Episodes)

Season 3 (2007) - (13 Episodes)

The Next Generation (2008) - (13 Episodes)

Specials (2008)

No overview available for this season.

Episodes:

Ep. 1: The Story Begins (2008-05-25)

Meerkat Manor: The Story Begins is a 2008 television film created by Discovery Films and Oxford Scientific Films as a prequel to the Animal Planet series Meerkat Manor. A scripted documentary narrated by Whoopi Goldberg, the film details the life of a meerkat named Flower from birth to her becoming the leader of a meerkat group called the Whiskers. The film is based on the research notes of the Kalahari Meerkat Project and primarily uses wild meerkat "actors" to represent those in the story. Shot over two years at the Kuruman River Reserve in Northern Cape, South Africa, the film employed a much larger crew than the series. Some scenes were shot at a wildlife park in the United Kingdom, while others were created using camera tricks and trained film animals. .