The Animals of Farthing Wood at 25: the kids TV animation that dared to be devastating With shades of Watership Down, and dealing similarly with death, loss, tragedy and hope, The Animals of Farthing Wood was […]

With shades of Watership Down, and dealing similarly with death, loss, tragedy and hope, The Animals of Farthing Wood was an extraordinary children’s TV show.

Based on the books by Colin Dann, the BBC animation series has its 25th anniversary this week.

Powerful, thought-provoking and poignant, Animals of Farthing Wood did not shy away from the brutality of nature – nor the impact of people on the environment.

i's TV newsletter: what you should watch next Email address is invalid Email address is invalid Thank you for subscribing! Sorry, there was a problem with your subscription.

This was certainly not your average programme about talking animals.

Disaster movie opening

Originally aired between 1993 and 1995, the show saw its titular cast of creatures forced to leave their British woodland home due to the devastation of urban development.

Their habitat made way for new housing, and the pouring concrete – sweeping like a plague across the forest, consuming all in its path – felt more threatening than any disaster movie of the same period.

What followed was an odyssey, fraught with risk and danger, as the animals, swearing an oath to stand together, set off in search of a new home.

The wonderful voice work of actors such as Ron Moody brought to life a colourful array of characters named for their species: Fox, Badger, Owl, Weasel and so on.

The endearing, witty and heartfelt personalities, and the interplay between them, ensured young viewers grew greatly attached to the characters.

Which made it all the more shocking, and heart-wrenching, when some of them were injured, abandoned or killed off.

A lesson in grief

A quick web search of the programme rapidly reveals articles with titles such as ‘The Animals of Farthing Wood’s most traumatic deaths’, and ‘6 times The Animals of Farthing Wood traumatised us’.

It is certainly true that the programme was unusually stark and brutal at times. Just look at the ‘Butcher Bird’.

But while there were moments of hard-hitting, and sometimes bloody, violence, this was not a show concerned with mere shock value. It also had important lessons to impart.

Badger: “Time to get up is it? Time to go out in the moonlight to hunt in Farthing Wood”

Many a child’s formative understanding of grief will have been formed around the death of characters on the show.

The passing of the elderly Badger, leaving his long-time companions sobbing with grief, was a powerful and resonant sequence. The kind a child might relate to the death of their own grandparent. A confused but kindly old person, slipping peacefully away into a wakeless sleep.

It was terribly sad, but also rather beautiful.

A show like Farthing Wood understood that if children can be taught about death sensitively from an early age, it would help them as they grow up, and encounter its effects first hand.

Man-made threats

The show also had much to say about other issues, including the impact of human activity on animals and their environment.

In The Animals of Farthing Wood, people are often presented as dangerous, barely glimpsed threats on the edge of a frame, or just out of shot.

Fox: “As a community, we’re all but finished here. Man and his machines have seen to that”

All we see of them are the guns they wield, the boots that pass overhead, or the wheels of the trucks that bear down on our heroes on the open road. It is their traps the animals get caught in. Their territory the creatures learn to fear.

Young viewers found themselves confronted with contemporary natural issues. The problems with developing the countryside, for one, but also the plight of urban foxes – revealed through the torments of the fox cub Bold (an especially heart-wrenching storyline).

Prejudice and discrimination was also a common theme. Having lost their home, and been forced to journey across country, the animals were often treated with hostility and contempt when they attempted to settle elsewhere.

Scarface: “I only hope they stick to their own lands, now they’ve got it. You can smell them everywhere”

An explicit example of this is the feud that develops between Fox and Vixen’s family, and the pack of blue foxes in the nature reserve.

There’s even a Romeo and Juliet style sub-plot thrown in (The Lion King 2 got there much later).

Would The Animals of Farthing Wood get made today?

For all the valuable lessons The Animals of Farthing Wood had to teach, and for all of its emotional weight and nuance, the graphic nature of some of its imagery – and its most upsetting moments – would doubtless meet with widespread ire and outrage in the era of Twitter and Facebook.

In 2016, a broadcast of Watership Down on daytime television drew a substantial backlash and flurry of complaints from angry parents.

Indeed, later that year, it was revealed that a new screen version of the story would not be “as brutal” – something the late Watership Down author Richard Adams welcomed at the time.

The Animals of Farthing Wood was shown on weekend mornings and after school on weekdays. It is hard to see how a similar show would occupy such slots now without causing widespread controversy.

This is unfortunate. Because there is something profoundly valuable about a show that does not shy away from the harsh realities of life and nature, yet also has much to say about the importance of friendship, kindness and understanding.

For that, The Animals of Farthing Wood retains an important and enduring place in the pantheon of children’s television. A hallmark of a time when it dared to be raw, powerful and devastating.