Meerkat Manor: The Story Begins

Meerkat Manor: The Story Begins
DVD cover with the film title at a white scripted font at the top, followed in the center by an image of an adult female meerkat sitting upright and a young meerkat peeking out from around her chest with its head and neck visible and one paw draped over the female's paw. At the bottom a blue banner notes the film is narrated by Whoopi Goldberg.
Region 1 DVD cover
Directed byChris Barker
Mike Slee
Written byCaroline Hawkins
Produced byCaroline Hawkins
Clare Birks
Carole Tomko
Mick Kaczorowski
Mark Wild
Narrated byWhoopi Goldberg
CinematographyRobin Smith
John Walters
Edited byOral Norrie Ottey
Music byLaurent Ferlet
Production
companies
Distributed byThe Weinstein Company
Release date
  • 25 May 2008 (2008-05-25)
Running time
75 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish

Meerkat Manor: The Story Begins is a 2008 television film created by Discovery Films and Oxford Scientific Films as a prequel to the Animal Planet series Meerkat Manor. A scripted documentary narrated by Whoopi Goldberg, the film details the life of a meerkat named Flower from birth to her becoming the leader of a meerkat group called the Whiskers. The film is based on the research notes of the Kalahari Meerkat Project and primarily uses wild meerkat "actors" to represent those in the story. Shot over two years at the Kuruman River Reserve in Northern Cape, South Africa, the film employed a much larger crew than the series. Some scenes were shot at a wildlife park in the United Kingdom, while others were created using camera tricks and trained film animals.

The 75-minute film premiered at the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival before its television premiere on Animal Planet on 25 May 2008. While it was praised for its cinematography, for maintaining the depth of coverage of the television series, and for its accessibility to newcomers to the series, it was criticized for not offering anything new to fans. The Kalahari Meerkat Project noted that the film was not completely accurate but praised it overall and recommended against analyzing it. Several reviewers praised Goldberg's narration, but the script was criticized as being too simplistic for adult viewers.