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the project

Meerkat Manor

Oxford Scientific Films · Animal Planet

Meerkat Manor is a landmark natural-history series following the lives, rivalries and relationships of a family of meerkats living in South Africa's Kalahari Desert. The series broke with the conventions of traditional wildlife documentary, treating a real animal society as an unfolding drama, giving individual animals names, personalities and evolving storylines.

At the centre of the series was Flower, the dominant female of the Whiskers group, whose family life, territorial disputes, alliances and struggles for survival unfolded across successive episodes. Filmed at the Kuruman River Reserve in collaboration with the Kalahari Meerkat Project, the production offered unusually intimate access to the animals both above and below ground, including behaviour inside their burrows.

The franchise subsequently expanded beyond the original television series. Meerkat Manor: The Story Begins (2008) revisited Flower's life in a feature-length prequel made by Oxford Scientific Films and Discovery Films, while Meerkats 3D (2011) took the subject into stereoscopic wildlife filmmaking for Sky 3D and National Geographic.

204M

households reached

160+

countries

3 Emmys

Primetime Emmy nominations

2 feature Films

cinematic relseases | 3D Film

“…so entertaining, that resistance is futile.”

— The New York Times

NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL

Double Gold Medal

MEERKAT MANOR

Gold Medal winner in both

Nature and Wildlife categories.

OMNI AWARDS

Gold & Silver Statues

MEERKAT MANOR

Gold Statue in Natural History

& Silver Statue for best Writing.

WILDSCREEn

Best Popular Broadcast Programme

MEERKAT MANOR SERIES 3

Winner of the Wildscreen Panda

for Best Popular Broadcast Programme.

Emmy

Emmy nomination

MEERKAT MANOr

Emmy-nominated wildlife soap opera for animal planet, credited with 'changing the landscape of natural history filmmaking'.

Awards

Highlights

Meerkat Manor became one of the defining natural-history franchises of its era, demonstrating how long-form character-led storytelling could transform the way audiences engaged with wildlife.

The series was broadcast internationally in more than 160 countries, and by 2008 was described by the Los Angeles Times as one of Animal Planet's most popular franchises. The same report noted that the programme was the network's bestselling DVD in mass retail at the time.

The series received substantial industry recognition. It won a Wildscreen Panda Award for Popular Broadcast Programme in 2008 for the episode Journey's End, which followed the death of the series' central matriarch, Flower.

The programme also won Gold Medals at the New York Festivals and received Gold awards for Natural History and Cinematography, plus Silver for Writing, at the 2006 Omni Awards. It was subsequently awarded the Grand Award for Family Programmes at the 2009 New York Festivals International Television Programming and Promotion Awards.

The format proved capable of extending beyond the original television series. Meerkat Manor: The Story Begins, a feature-length prequel released in 2008, expanded Flower's story for a film audience, while Meerkats 3D brought the franchise into stereoscopic filmmaking and was nominated for Best 3D Feature Film at Wildscreen.

The franchise's longevity was further demonstrated when Meerkat Manor returned in 2021 as Rise of the Dynasty, a new 13-part series following descendants of Flower's Whiskers family. BBC America described it as a new instalment of the established nature franchise.

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“Meerkat Manor has followed in the paw prints of The Lion King’s Timon to raise their species’ star in Hollywood.”

— Time Magazine

production

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Meerkat Manor was built around long-form observational filming at the Kuruman River Reserve in South Africa, where the production worked alongside the Kalahari Meerkat Project. Rather than following a sequence of self-contained wildlife stories, the cameras stayed with the Whiskers and neighbouring groups over time, allowing events, relationships and changes within the groups to accumulate across the series.

That approach gave the editorial team a substantial body of continuing observational material to work with. Individual episodes could draw on events unfolding over different periods, while maintaining continuity between the animals, their territories and the wider group dynamics. The result was a format that combined the factual basis of natural-history filmmaking with the continuing narrative structure of a series.

Dotty Wilde's Anne Sommerfield was part of the original production team, with credits spanning research, production and writing. She was credited as Researcher on 13 episodes in 2005, Assistant Producer and Producer on 13 episodes in 2006, and Writer on four episodes. Her producer/writer credits include The Enemy Within and The Art of Leadership.

The series was produced by Oxford Scientific Films for Animal Planet International, created and series-edited by Caroline Hawkins, with Chris Barker as Series Producer. The original production ran to 52 × 30-minute episodes and established the format that was subsequently developed into a wider Meerkat Manor franchise.