''Animal Magic'' is a BBC children's television series which ran from 1962 to 1983 from BBC Bristol. It began fortnightly and was transmitted weekly from 1964. The presenter was Johnny Morris. The show combined jovial voiceovers applied to various animals from

Bristol Zoo Bristol Zoo was a zoo in the city of Bristol in South West England. The zoo's stated mission was to "maintain and defend” biodiversity through breeding endangered species, conserving threatened species and habitats and promoting a wider unders ...

with some basic educational features. Morris' co-presenters over the years were

Gerald Durrell Gerald Malcolm Durrell, (7 January 1925 – 30 January 1995) was a British naturalist, writer, zookeeper, conservationist, and television presenter. He founded the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust and the Jersey Zoo on the Channel Island o ...

Tony Soper Tony Soper (born 10 January 1929) is a British naturalist, author and broadcaster. Life and career Soper was educated at Hyde Park Elementary School and at Devonport High School for Boys, both in Plymouth. He joined the BBC at 17 as a "youth-i ...

, Keith Shackleton, Roger Tabor, Sheila Young, David Taylor and

Terry Nutkins Terence Paul Nutkins (12 August 1946 – 6 September 2012) was an English naturalist, television presenter and author. He appeared in the UK children's programmes '' Animal Magic'', '' The Really Wild Show'', '' Brilliant Creatures'' and ...

. When Nutkins joined the show in the early 1980s, the producers tried to update it, using new video effects technology. This allowed them to do such things as "shrink" the presenters to allow them to see life from an ant's viewpoint, or to swim in a riverbed for example.

Joe Henson Joseph Leslie "Joe" Henson, MBE (16 October 1932 – 5 October 2015) was a farmer who founded the Rare Breeds Survival Trust and appeared as a presenter on BBC shows such as '' Animal Magic''. Biography Joe Henson was born in London. His father ...

and

Desmond Morris Desmond John Morris FLS ''hon. caus.'' (born 24 January 1928) is an English zoologist, ethologist and surrealist painter, as well as a popular author in human sociobiology. He is known for his 1967 book ''The Naked Ape'', and for his telev ...

also appeared on the show. Dotty the

ring-tailed lemur The ring-tailed lemur (''Lemur catta'') is a large strepsirrhine primate and the most recognized lemur due to its long, black and white ringed tail. It belongs to Lemuridae, one of five lemur families, and is the only member of the ''Lemur'' ...

appeared as a regular guest for eight years in the 1970s. Other animal stars included the sea lion Gemini, and two parrots, Cocky (a sulphur-crested cockatoo) and Brolly (an umbrella cockatoo). The show was discontinued in 1983 when the programme's anthropomorphic treatment of animals fell out of fashion. A new children's wildlife series, '' The Really Wild Show'', began in 1986, with the former ''Animal Magic'' co-presenter

as the main host. The 100th edition was transmitted on 4 January 1967. 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. In addition to airing on the BBC, the series was also aired on ABC in Australia and TV One in New Zealand.

Theme tune

The signature tune, "Las Vegas", performed by Group Forty Orchestra, was written by

Laurie Johnson Laurence Reginald Ward Johnson, (born 7 February 1927) is an English composer and bandleader who has written scores for dozens of film and television series and has been one of the most highly regarded arrangers of instrumental pop and swing ...

for KPM in 1960. It more recently featured as the theme music for BBC Two comedy '' W1A'' (2014–2017). Around 1980, the original orchestral version was replaced by a

funk Funk is a music genre that originated in African American communities in the mid-1960s when musicians created a rhythmic, danceable new form of music through a mixture of various music genres that were popular among African Americans in the mi ...

arrangement (featuring an electric guitar with a

wah wah pedal A wah-wah pedal, or simply wah pedal, is a type of electric guitar effects pedal that alters the tone and frequencies of the guitar signal to create a distinctive sound, mimicking the human voice saying the onomatopoeic name "wah-wah". The ped ...

References

External links

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British Film Institute Screen OnlineBBC Television Classic And Cult Website – Animal Magic
{{BBC Natural History Unit 1960s British children's television series 1970s British children's television series 1980s British children's television series 1962 British television series debuts 1983 British television series endings BBC children's television shows Lost BBC episodes Television series about animals Films set in zoos