The Zoo, CBBC

It’s sounds like a relatively simple proposition: an ob doc for kids, set in a zoo, with talking animals.

But for many unforeseen reasons, creating The Zoo ended up being something of a beast (excuse the pun).

The first step on a long road was taken nearly three years ago, when we set out to make the pilot. I’m not sure anyone has ever made an ‘animated comedy ob doc natural history series for children’ before, let alone the BBC Natural History Unit – and certainly not me.

I didn’t really know where to start, but editor Stuart Garlick and I cobbled together a test episode using material that had already been shot at Paignton Zoo in Devon, and then tried to make it funny by adding some voiceover.

Animal etiquette

 The results were okay, but two fundamental questions remained: would children fi nd it funny, and could a gorilla say ‘shut up’ on CBBC?

Armed with the yet-to-be-animated pilot, executive producer Jonny Keeling and I headed out on the road and began showing it to kids.

Our first test screening with a group of nine-year-olds in Bristol was an incredibly tense affair. We had crafted quite a conventional ob doc opening and, if I’m honest, it dragged.

The silence in the room was palpable; unlike adults, children of that age don’t pretend to like something out of courtesy. Their body language said it all. Every yawn, head scratch, nose-pick and wandering stare felt like a knife in the heart.

But the moment Jürgen (our megalomaniac silverback hero gorilla) uttered the words “shut up”, the room exploded into laughter. I turned to Jonny and we both smiled. Our questions had been answered.

With the addition of animated mouths, from the hugely talented team at Hello Charlie, our plan was formed.

But then a new problem emerged. Making one episode was hard enough – how on earth were we going to make 30?

Due to the lack of a ‘how-to’ manual for this kind of series, I licked my finger, stuck it in the air and decided we should do three pretty obvious things: shoot some ob doc material; write some funny lines; get it animated.

It may sound straightforward, but we soon discovered that when brought together in this crazy mix, none of these key ingredients seemed to work.

The material wasn’t the issue; self-shooting director Rowan Crawford and the team at Paignton Zoo had done a brilliant job. The question was how to make the material funny. It was time to stick the finger in the air again.

We had decided early on that if we wrote the characters well enough to begin with, once we married them with actuality, everything would hopefully fall into place.

The plan was to use what became known as the ‘Homer Simpson model’. Homer is such a well-written character that you know him inside out. Whether you send him to the moon or lock him in a brewery overnight, you have a pretty good idea what will happen.

Actuality meets fantasy 

For The Zoo, therefore, we had to get the gorilla’s personality nailed up front, so that if he got a thorn stuck in his foot for real, we’d know roughly how he’d react in a made-up, comedic way. That was the plan, at least.

Trying to marry actuality with fantasy in this way is a delicate balance. We were keen that the keepers’ world should remain genuine, but as soon as we turn to the animals, their universe should know no bounds.

What helped further was a fairly simple set of rules: the animals can hear the keepers, but the keepers can’t hear the animals.

Narrator Hugh Dennis acts as moderator, communicating with the keepers, the animals and, crucially, the audience.

And then we were off and running.

After three months of shooting, 12 months of offline and 10 months of animation, I have learned so much about this process. I can now honestly say that if anyone is ever crazy enough to ask me to do it all over again – at least I now know how not to make it.