If anything can be said about Our Zoo, it’d be this: it lacks no shortage of imagination. This is what I perhaps loved so much about it. From the first spark of his idea to the closing scene, Our Zoo bubbles with imagination and dreams. With no funds, George forges ahead with his head full of possibilities unaware of the whirlwind of opposition he’ll encounter.Īs is common with the dramas the British put out, this one is slow moving and without hurrying itself, it keeps to its own schedule. But not just any zoo, this zoo would be unique and operate without caging the animals. When George comes into ownership of two exotic animals, a flicker of an idea takes root all of which is solidified when he sees a grand and empty old house on copious acres of land.

Then there are his two daughters, the 15-year-old Muriel (Amelia Clarkson), who fancies herself in love with the neighbor boy and daddy’s girl, and young June (Honor Kneafsey), who’s as much of a dreamer as her father. His wife, Lizzie (Liz White) believes anything but George’s perception of himself remaining by his side. She mourns the loss of her other son making George feel all the more useless. Even though he’s back on English soil, he and his family live in cramped quarters with his parents, where his mother (Anne Reid) doesn’t help matters. It’s headed up by George Mottershead, a war veteran who is still suffering the aftereffects of his service.

Instead of some sort of epic love story, this BBC series establishes a family that is broken into pieces in some sense, but a family who’d do anything for each other nonetheless.

Written as six parts, this has a lot to recommend itself, not the least of which is the refreshing familial quality the script develops in telling the story with fantastic character development (especially when one considers Lee Ingleby’s George). Their newer miniseries, Our Zoo, is not only inspired by a true story, but it takes new pathways that cement it as being something of an “exotic” production. This is why seeing any other kind of adaptation from them is a kind of a rarity.

BBC is an entity often associated with period dramas that are set in the Edwardian or Victorian eras akin to their magnificent Jane Austen or Charles Dickens adaptations.

Our Zoo by June Mottershead