TV: At last - audience goes ape at NZ-made drama

TERI FITSELL marvels at the monkeys, gasps at the giraffes and relishes the rhino (but doesn't think much of the alliteration).

Only two episodes in to locally made series The Zoo, and already jungle fever has taken hold.

TV One's thoroughly enjoyable new series on Sunday nights takes audiences behind the scenes at Auckland's own animal emporium and looks at life there for both the inmates and their keepers.

It's a fair bet that by series-end the zoo will be flooded with applications from wannabe keepers, because the job looks great.

Clearly, you need courage (like when Andrea's in danger of being kicked by a very scared giraffe); determination (when Christine is attempting to separate six hyperactive chimps into their separate sleeping quarters); and loads of patience (three and a half hours to coax one baby giraffe out of a trailer).

Ingenuity is another requirement. In episode one the keepers decided that the rhino's new wallow was not wallowy enough. Their solution to the problem was to march two elephants into the enclosure to get stuck in and mix up more mud, glorious mud.

Director and producer Kathryn Moore displays keen timing in switching the focus back and forth between various situations to maintain interest.

And Greg Johnson's narration is entertaining, although he's perhaps over-amused by a lot of alliteration.

The animal stars are easily holding their own on the entertainment front.

So far we've had close encounters with chimp Lucy, whose son Luca and mate Mike both went completely ape when she had to undergo some family planning surgery.

Then there was potential horror for the hippos when a burst water main nearly put the kibosh on their dream hippodrome.

And for sheer drama, Poppy the meerkat's close call with a near-fatal bout of toxoplasmosis was a claw-biter.

The series offers educational enhancement, too.

Keeper of the carnivores Trent Barclay had a few revelations about big cats, dismissing lions as just growly and thuggish, while praising his brace of Sumatran tigers for their intelligence.

Not that they repaid his kind words ... both dismissing out of hand (sorry, paw) a fine tiger toy he'd spent all day making for them.

But a personal favourite is Mandhela, the reticent rhino. He's displaying a revelatory lack of rhino attitude and, if truth be told, rather letting the rhino side down.

Aren't these the creatures that charge down jeeps on safari, thundering over anything in their path, caring not a jot for danger?

Not Mandhela.

He's a two-and-a half-tonne softie, suffering shyness so severe he's too frightened to wallow in his own mudbath, and needs constant reassurances and petting from keeper Laurie Pond.

Such behaviour will surely get him thrown out of the rhinos' union.