Meerkat Manor The Next Generation 2009 New DVD Top-quality Free UK shipping

Meerkat Manor is a British television programme produced by Oxford Scientific Films for Animal Planet International that premiered in September 2005 and ran for four series until its cancellation in August 2008. Using traditional animal documentary style footage along with narration, the series told the story of the Whiskers, one of more than a dozen families of meerkats in the Kalahari Desert being studied as part of the Kalahari Meerkat Project, a long-term field study into the ecological causes and evolutionary consequences of the cooperative nature of meerkats. The original programme was narrated by Bill Nighy, with the narration redubbed by Mike Goldman for the Australian airings and Sean Astin for the American broadcasts. The fourth series, subtitled The Next Generation, saw Stockard Channing replacing Astin as the narrator in the American dubbing.[1]
Meerkat Manor premiered in the United Kingdom on 12 September 2005, and the first 13-episode series concluded on 24 October 2005. With the success of the programme in the United Kingdom, Animal Planet started broadcasting it on its national channels in Australia, Canada, and the US. It has since been rebroadcast in more than 160 other countries.[2] The fourth, and final, series aired initially in the United States from 6 June 2008[1] to 22 August 2008. In August 2009, it was reported that the programme had been cancelled.[3]
Although the show faced criticism from viewers for not intervening when a meerkat was injured and faced death, Meerkat Manor enjoyed considerable success and was Animal Planet’s top series in October 2007, both on the cable channel and through its video-on-demand service. The show’s experimental format broke new ground in animal documentary filming techniques and gave viewers a long-term, intimate look into the lives of its meerkat stars, breaking the traditional wall between viewer and subject found with most documentaries. Meerkat Manor was nominated for three Primetime Emmy Awards: two in 2007 and one in 2008.[4] It won awards at the 2006 Omni Awards, and at the 2006 and 2007 New York Festivals TV Broadcasting Awards. The first three series have been released to DVD in both Region 1 and Region 2. In 2007, a book entitled Meerkat Manor – The Story of Flower of the Kalahari was released in the UK, detailing the life of Flower and the Whiskers before the series’ filming began. A television film, Meerkat Manor: The Story Begins, documenting Flower’s birth and rise to matriarch of the Whiskers, aired on Animal Planet on 25 May 2008.