Topic

My Family and Other Animals

Not who you're looking for? Others named My Family and Other Animals: autobiographical work by naturalist Gerald Durrell (1956) · 2005 television film directed by Sheree Folkson

0 members

Overview

My Family and Other Animals is a 1987 British TV mini-series produced by the BBC and directed by Peter Barber-Fleming. It is based on Gerald Durrell's autobiographical book by the same name, My Family and Other Animals, which tells about the time his family spent on the Greek Island of Corfu in 1935–1939. The series consists of 10 episodes and was aired for the first time between 17 October and 19 December 1987. Plot The show tells the story of the extravagant Durrell family who, tired of the rainy and unhealthy English climate, move to the sun-drenched Greek island of Corfu. The family consists of Gerry (young naturalist), his widowed mother (excellent cook), his eldest brother Larry (starting writer), another brother Leslie (mad about guns and boats) and sister Margo (who suffers from acne). In Corfu they experience a lot of adventures and befriend many interesting people, including Spìro, a taxi driver who lived for many years in Chicago where he learned to speak broken English, and doctor Theodore Stephanides, a polymath who, just like Gerry, adores nature and helps him explore the island's varied wildlife. Filming and production The £2 million production was a combined effort by the BBC's Drama Department and Natural History Unit. Exterior scenes were filmed in Corfu in the summer of 1987. It was intended that there should be at least three minutes of natural history footage for every half-hour episode, and twenty scorpions, ten praying mantises, three giant toads, a number of snakes, tortoises, terrapins, barn owls and pigeons trained to dance had been brought to Corfu, together with six hundred frozen mice, as food for the snakes. At the end of July 1987, Gerald Durrell flew out to Corfu to be present for the last few days of the filming. He gave invaluable advice to the production team at the scripting stage, demanding the power of veto over only one thing – the casting of his mother. He felt Hannah Gordon fitted the bill perfectly: She's absolutely superb. She picks up beautifully my mother's slightly flustered, not-quite-with-it-half-the-time air, and not knowing, if the family were squabbling, whose side to take.

From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).

On IJR

No public IJR answers mention My Family and Other Animals yet. As people ask about it and share their answers, they'll appear here.

Not who you're looking for? Others named My Family and Other Animals: autobiographical work by naturalist Gerald Durrell (1956) · 2005 television film directed by Sheree Folkson

Overview

My Family and Other Animals is a 1987 British TV mini-series produced by the BBC and directed by Peter Barber-Fleming. It is based on Gerald Durrell's autobiographical book by the same name, My Family and Other Animals, which tells about the time his family spent on the Greek Island of Corfu in 1935–1939. The series consists of 10 episodes and was aired for the first time between 17 October and 19 December 1987. Plot The show tells the story of the extravagant Durrell family who, tired of the rainy and unhealthy English climate, move to the sun-drenched Greek island of Corfu. The family consists of Gerry (young naturalist), his widowed mother (excellent cook), his eldest brother Larry (starting writer), another brother Leslie (mad about guns and boats) and sister Margo (who suffers from acne). In Corfu they experience a lot of adventures and befriend many interesting people, including Spìro, a taxi driver who lived for many years in Chicago where he learned to speak broken English, and doctor Theodore Stephanides, a polymath who, just like Gerry, adores nature and helps him explore the island's varied wildlife. Filming and production The £2 million production was a combined effort by the BBC's Drama Department and Natural History Unit. Exterior scenes were filmed in Corfu in the summer of 1987. It was intended that there should be at least three minutes of natural history footage for every half-hour episode, and twenty scorpions, ten praying mantises, three giant toads, a number of snakes, tortoises, terrapins, barn owls and pigeons trained to dance had been brought to Corfu, together with six hundred frozen mice, as food for the snakes. At the end of July 1987, Gerald Durrell flew out to Corfu to be present for the last few days of the filming. He gave invaluable advice to the production team at the scripting stage, demanding the power of veto over only one thing – the casting of his mother. He felt Hannah Gordon fitted the bill perfectly: She's absolutely superb. She picks up beautifully my mother's slightly flustered, not-quite-with-it-half-the-time air, and not knowing, if the family were squabbling, whose side to take.

From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).