Paul O'Grady boards long-haul flights to African bush camps and Bornean rescue centres, trading his Battersea kennels for elephant nurseries and orangutan sanctuaries. The ITV series follows the comic as he bottle-feeds baby rhinos whose mothers were shot by poachers, helps tranquillise a giraffe for relocation and learns to read the body language of traumatised chimps. Each episode pairs his Liverpudlian asides with practical conservation: anti-poaching patrols in South Luangwa, vet clinics in Lusaka and the daily maths of keeping a two-ton hippo calf alive on 30 pints of milk a day.
Ratings slipped quietly from 3.29 million for the January 2014 debut to 2.75 million for the second run, yet ITV green-lit a truncated final lap of two episodes in April 2016. The show never adopted the live-studio trappings of O'Grady’s dog re-homing slots; instead, cinematography leans on drone shots over Kafue National Park and night-vision footage of pangolin rescues. Producers at Shiver keep the host’s schtick, letting him scold a wayward baboon then lapse into whispered concern when a cheetah cub stops feeding.
Three series totalling eight hour-long films constitute the entire archive, with no recommission beyond spring 2016. The orphans themselves, shadowed from rescue to release, age off-camera: a lion cub named Jomo grows into a 180-kilo adolescent and is last seen collar-free in the Mosi-oa-Tunya reserve, beyond the reach of O’Grady’s farewell voice-over.
Production Details
ITV / 3 Seasons / 8 Episodes / 2014 - Present
Main Cast
Paul O'Grady as Self
