Sunday, as ever, is mild at heart

Published on Sunday 20 January 2008 22:48

Wild At Heart, ITV Kingdom, ITV

THE other day I got the chance to use a phrase I have never used before, and will almost certainly never use again: "I don't think I can finish this zebra."

Yes, it's amazing what exotic meats you can find in restaurants these days (and for the record, it's chewy and rather tasteless; you're not missing much). But the sight of an equally dead zebra being autopsied on Wild At Heart last night did, therefore, make me feel distinctly peculiar. "Dehydrated, diarrhoea, might just be a bug," mused vet Danny, before concluding his stripy patient had died from eating the wrong kind of plant. We didn't see what happened to the body afterwards, so I just hope it didn't end up on my plate.

But surely not, for the Trevanion family who run the Leopard's Den safari park are far too kindly to carve up their animals. Already owning elephants, giraffes and so on, during this episode they also adopted a chimp and two tiger cubs, just out of the goodness, or wildness, of their hearts.

Wild at Heart is now on its third series. I confess I missed the first two, but it really was exactly what I'd expected: a de-clawed Born Free with added soap opera elements.

The plot is just a frame for the scenery and animals and is based around dopey misunderstandings: had various people told other people certain things right away (Danny's wife couldn't seem to tell him they were broke, his teenage daughter couldn't seem to tell her boyfriend not to move away), it would have been over in five minutes. A crisis about whether they would pass inspection to gain a luxury lodge licence, despite dead zebras, broken fences, no money and stolen tigers, was abruptly resolved by them all bursting out laughing and deciding not to bother. A happy ending, I guess?

The cast do what they're supposed to: Stephen Tompkinson is grumpy, Amanda Holden is smiley, the kids are stroppy but rally round in the end, Hayley Mills (as the mother-in-law) says dippy things such as: "Leopard's Den is going to be THE chic bespoke bijou African experience!" For a show set in Africa, actually, it's remarkably white – the only two black characters with speaking roles are a maid in one scene and the neighbouring hotel manager who was mistreating the tiger cubs.

Still, the scenery is nice and while you'd get a better look at the animals in a David Attenborough documentary, it's harmless Sunday night snooze-viewing. And so is **Kingdom, Stephen Fry's televisual equivalent of a nice cup of tea and a biscuit, which has no animals but some lovely picturesque postcard shots of Norfolk.

Where *Wild At Heart has Hayley Mills, *Kingdom has Phyllida Law as the country solicitor's auntie, who tells him: "I've seen that look before: it's either sexual frustration or you're constipated." Fair point, really, since Fry wears the same slightly baffled but kindly expression throughout as the sensible still centre around which various nutty people revolve, particularly his shifty back-from-the-dead brother and moany sister.

The storylines here are so low-voltage as to be fully in line with *The Scotsman's current energy-saving campaign but, oh dear, they're dull. The twist in the tale of an elderly man and his young girlfriend was obvious, as was the eventual necessity for Kingdom's young assistant to have to strip off in order to represent some nudist clients. Not to worry, all were carefully shielded by handy wineglasses and bar tables. After all, this is Sunday night TV: nothing to scare the zebras.