Animal Magic
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For the Blow Monkeys album, see Animal Magic (album). For the Bonobo album, see Animal Magic (Bonobo album).
Animal Magic was a BBC television show aimed at children. The show was first broadcast in 1962 and ran for 21 years.
The presenter was the avuncular Johnny Morris. His charismatic style and genuine fondness for animals made the show an instant success with children and adults alike. The show combined jovial voiceovers applied to various animals from Bristol Zoo with some basic educational features.
Morris' co-presenters included Tony Soper, Keith Shackleton, David Taylor and Terry Nutkins. When Nutkins joined the show in the early 1980s, the producers tried to update it somewhat, using video technology which was at the time in its infancy. This allowed them to do such things as "shrink" the presenters to allow them to see life from an ants viewpoint, or to swim in a riverbed for example.
Much to Morris' anger, the show was discontinued in 1983 when the programme's anthropomorphic treatment of animals fell out of fashion. Nevertheless, the show and its presenter are fondly remembered by many and it enjoys cult status.
Many editions of the show were junked by the BBC in the early 1990s when they were assumed to be of no further use. Recent documentaries such as The Way We Went Wild have had to resort to using clips from off-air recordings of some shows.
