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''Manhunters'' was a three-part TV drama series that aired on
BBC Two BBC Two is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network owned and operated by the BBC. It covers a wide range of subject matter, with a remit "to broadcast programmes of depth and substance" in contrast to the more mainstream an ...
in the United Kingdom in 2005. It tells the story of three cases of
man-eaters A man-eater is an animal that preys on humans as a pattern of hunting behavior. This does not include the scavenging of corpses, a single attack born of opportunity or desperate hunger, or the incidental eating of a human that the animal has kil ...
through the memoirs of those who hunted them and, in the case of the third episode, accidentally unleashed them on their community. The first tells the story of
Jim Corbett Edward James Corbett (25 July 1875 – 19 April 1955) was a British hunter, tracker, naturalist, and author who hunted a number of man-eating tigers and leopards in the Indian subcontinent. He held the rank of colonel in the British Indian ...
, played by
Jason Flemyng Jason Iain Flemyng''Births, Marriages & Deaths Index of England & Wales, 1916–2005.''; at ancestry.com (born 25 September 1966) is an English actor. He is known for roles in British films such as ''Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels'' (1998) ...
and the Man-Eating Leopard of Rudraprayag. The second tells the story of George Rushby and the Lions of Njombe, and the third tells the story of the
Wolf of Gysinge The Wolf of Gysinge was a man-eating wolf which, in three months, attacked and killed many children in Gysinge near central Sweden in the early 1820s. Attacks During a three-month period between December 30, 1820, and March 27, 1821, the wolf at ...
.


Inaccuracies

"The Man-eating Leopard of Rudraprayag" episode heavily differs from Corbett's memoirs: In the film, Corbett is shown as a bare-faced young man at the time. In reality, Corbett was a fifty-year-old with a moustache. In the film, when asked how they will find the leopard, Corbett says on two occasions that they will wait for it to kill again. In reality, Corbett said that was unacceptable. The centrepiece of the film is not the investigation and hunt for the leopard, but rather a story about the Ibbotsons, in which the struggles of an ambitious bureaucrat and his unloved wife are pitched against Corbett and the forest. The hunt for the leopard is featured as more of a subplot that always takes a back seat to the Ibbotson melodrama and the other two subplots in which Corbett builds fond friendships with the local pundit and an Indian boy named Sanji and whose scenes are usually quite short and rushed compared to the former. In the film, the Indian boy Sanji accompanies Corbett and assists him while he is tracking a couple of times. In reality, Corbett always tracked and hunted alone (except with Ibbotson) after a learning experience with his first man-eater in 1907. This Indian boy's death by the leopard was the driving force that caused Corbett to use the gin trap in the film. In reality, Corbett first used the trap much earlier in the hunt and when a leopard (the wrong one) fell for it and he accidentally freed it, Corbett and Ibbotson tracked it down and Corbett shot it in the head. In the film, Corbett was sick at the time and killed it while it leaped at him, passing out right afterwards. In the film, Corbett is shown fatally wounding the leopard after it had gravely injured the pundit, who was bringing him a rifle light, while running down a path in a thunderstorm. In reality, Corbett shot the leopard by torch light while sitting in a machan. The pundit was not only alive and well, but among the first to hear the shot and called out to Corbett for a status update about the leopard. Corbett, not wanting to scare away the possibly wounded leopard, did not answer, and the pundit quickly closed the door of his cottage.


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* {{IMDb title, id=0461274, title=Manhunters 2005 British television series debuts 2005 British television series endings 2000s British drama television series BBC television dramas 2000s British television miniseries English-language television shows Television series set in the 1920s Television shows set in India