The Animals of Farthing Wood is 25 years old · 1:17am Jan 7th, 2018
Hey, an actually descriptive blog title!
Let me tell you about one of the defining shows of my childhood.
Bloody hell those squirrels are huge
The year is 1993, and I'm a dorky 10-year-old boy living in a fairly average and boring London suburb.
Nobody knows what an internet is. There's no such thing as a "website". Adventurous people are just starting to try out these newfangled "PCs" to see what they're all about. In playgrounds across the country, kids are collectively holding an important debate: Mario or Sonic? Street Fighter II is taking the world by storm.
And, in the UK, there are only four channels on TV.
BBC 1, BBC 2, ITV, Channel 4. That's it. The four terrestrial channels. Ahhh. Such simplicity. Satellite TV did exist, but what kind of crazy person would fork out money for television without being forced to by the Government? Nobody that's who!
(Well, okay, my parents did eventually get satellite TV 3 years later and never looked back, but, y'know, everyone was doing it at the time).
This was the era of after-school childrens television. A three-hour block of programming, carefully positioned to catch a child returning home from school and ensnare them with colorful entertainment until the evening. I mean, what else is an introverted child going to do?
And this was where I fell in love with an animated TV series called The Animals of Farthing Wood.
This show has a heck of a lot to answer for. It kickstarted my love of nature, which persists to this day. It showed me the lasting appeal of ongoing storylines. It showed me that reality is not black and white; that nature doesn't care for the abstractions of good and evil. It showed me the power of collectives; that a group that works together can achieve seemingly impossible ends.
And it taught me of death. But, more on that later.
Here's a crash course in Farthing Wood lore:
* Humans are in the process of destroying Farthing Wood for human reasons.
* The animals who live there, realizing that they will soon have no home, decide to move.
* Toad, who is a toad, knows of a place called White Deer Park, which is a protected nature reserve. If the animals go there, they will be safe from humans forever.
* The animals realize that the journey will be long, difficult, and dangerous, and that they will all need each other's help if they are to survive it. For this reason, every animal takes the Oath: a promise that they will help each other and not, y'know, kill and eat each other.
* The animals leave their doomed home and set course for White Deer Park.
Now you might be thinking "Hang on. Isn't this Watership Down?" and to that, I would first give you a high-five for recognizing my favorite book, and then I would agree that yes, this is very much the same plot as Watership Down. And to be honest, given how much I love WD, I'm not even complaining.
But there are differences. The main one is the fact that this isn't a rag-tag band of strangely religious rabbits who can't count; this is a large group of basically every kind of critter you'd find in a European woodland. Mice, shrews, squirrels, rabbits, snakes, toads, rabbits, hares, weasels, moles, hedgehogs, badgers, foxes, and a few birds too. (Surprisingly few birds actually, but I guess if you're a bird then it's a bit easier to escape imminent destruction, so they probably didn't care to join). So there's a wide variety of animals and this naturally causes complications and conflicts. The Oath is particularly important for this reason and I recall it came up quite a lot in the series. The animals frequently have to go against their own nature in service of the Oath; like Fox (who is a fox) having to defend the rabbits from other predators, or Badger (who is a badger) carrying Mole (who is a mole) on his back, because I think Mole was blind when above ground. (Also, my favorite character).
The first season follows the animals' perilous journey to White Deer Park. Oh, and it is perilous. You'd better believe it is perilous. You can't have any discussion about TAoFW without mentioning this. Animals die.
Like, they really die.
I dare you to Google "animals of farthing wood butcher bird".
If you're lucky, there'll be a discretion shot so that you don't see the actual fatal moment, but the TV show does not shy away from showing you, that yes, an animal very definitely did just snuff it rather horribly. And we're not talking faceless villain deaths, either. We're talking actual characters who we've been following all through the series. Not only do we watch them die, we also watch other characters watching them die. And then they carry on. They have to. Or they'll die too.
This is, in fact, the main thing that people remember the show for. The brutality. I wouldn't say it was a gorefest or anything; the show didn't revel in showing animals being killed or injured, and I don't even think it happens that often. But, it was the show's way of telling us that the danger is very real. These are a group of animals on the edge. They are not safe, at any time. That tense atmosphere was one of the things that made it so compelling for me.
Another reason I loved it is simply that it's beautiful. Sure, the animation hasn't really aged well, and the voice acting feels rather hokey nowadays, but nonetheless, the show is replete with natural beauty, like a countryside painting come to life. This is not a fantasy world; this is a real world, our world, from a non-human perspective.
Wait, there were newts too? I don't even remember them.
And so, The Animals of Farthing Wood is one of the very few TV shows that I actually made an effort to follow; to catch week-after-week. Which was a bigger ask back in the day, you know, because you couldn't just catch up on your favorite shows on the internet. The best you could do is get someone to tape it for you. On video cassette. If you had a video cassette recorder.
But it was worth it. It wasn't some nebulous "the same thing happens every week" cartoon; the story moved and progressed with each new episode. They face setbacks and overcome them. They get closer to their goal. Characters die and don't come back. I needed to know that they made it to where they were going.
Spoiler: they did. (Well, the ones who were still alive did, at least).
Additional spoiler: White Deer Park is not quite the haven they thought it would be. But that's season 2.
There was a third season of the show, but I haven't actually seen it. I lost track of the show by that point, for reasons that I can't remember (most likely, my interest in computing had taken hold by then). I heard that the tone shifted away from drama to something lighter and more comedic, which would be sad if true.
But anyway. I couldn't let the occasion pass without celebration. I don't think there will ever be a show like The Animals of Farthing Wood again. Happy 25th, AoFW.
Huh. I'd never heard of this series until now. Thanks for sharing the nostalgia.
Ah yes. Caddicarus fans know this show. “Animal Game of Thrones” he called it.
Hmm, I think I recall that one (but I don't quite remember half of the 90's, so I'm not sure).
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Or "Animal Battlestar Galactica", if you like. :) I'd say that the second season is the Game of Thrones-y one, with the whole competing families thing.
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“So much death...”
“Animals of Farthing Death.”
“Animals of Death Wood.”
“Animals of Death Death.”
—Caddicarus
1993? I was 1 at the time. also FARThing, lol
also
yap, that what butcher birds do, the name kinda gives it away though. They ain't called "fluffy balls of love bird" , their name is BUTCHER bird for a reason. Kinda reminds me of a scorpion in Israel, the most deadly scorpion in the world, the name? DEATHSTALKER (in hebrow it's just called yellow scorpion though)
I remember this one. I also read some of the books… That was a long time ago… vaguely remember one story about a fox cub in White Deer Park who decides it’s too soft for his liking so he goes out to be a fox in the real world. He then gets shot, but survives with some help from a friendly badger.
It has an interesting approach to anthropomorphism which seemed to divide the fans I knew. Wildlife enthusiasts liked the realistic depictions of the way animals live and hunt and the dangers they face, but some found the whole idea of a whole bunch of different species helping each other out was rather stupid. The idea that animals compete and don’t cooperate is a pretty fundamental part of zoology, with few exceptions.
Then there are others who liked the human story of animals of working together to help one another in the face of adversity, and then wondered why the author kept killing off characters with no obvious reason other than to be realistic (but why try to be realistic when it obviously isn’t?)
If you can just accept what the author is trying to do, it’s a very good story. But not in the same league as Watership Down.
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Yeah, there is a dichotomy in the animal behavior that you just have to accept - which, as a child, I had no problem doing. The "unrealism" of animals helping each other out is very much a part of the story, and the implications of this do get explored in the series. (I did read the books and I remember they were a bit different, but I can't remember how exactly).
Uh...actually?....
The hedgehogs. I could probably have made it through without those hedgehogs.