I Am Not an Animal
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| I Am Not An Animal | |
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 The cast of I Am Not an Animal (featured from left to right are Hugh the monkey, Mark the bird, Philip the horse, Claire the rat, and Winona the pittbull) |
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| Genre | Comedy |
| Starring | Steve Coogan Amelia Bullmore Julia Davis Kevin Eldon Arthur Mathews Simon Pegg John Shrapnel |
| Country of origin | UK |
| No. of episodes | 6 |
| Production | |
| Running time | 30 minutes |
| Broadcast | |
| Original channel | BBC2 |
| Original run | 10 May 2004 – 14 June 2004 |
| Links | |
| IMDb profile | |
I Am Not an Animal was an animated series telling the tale of highly intelligent animals rescued from a vivisectionist laboratory and forced to live on their own. The series was made and directed by Peter Baynham. It was produced by Triffic Films and ran on BBC2 in the United Kingdom between the 10 May and 14 June 2004.
Contents |
[edit] Story
In the laboratory Vivi-Sec UK, a group of five beasts are part of the fourth batch of Project S, an experiment designed to make human-language-speaking animals.
The beasts are given a sophisticated life-style in order for them to develop their intellect, living a luxurious life run by computers that something similar to a four-star hotel, unaware they are really part of a laboratory experiment. They have complex personalities and names, wear specially designed clothes, speak in a pseudo-intellectual fashion, eat gourmet food, drink fine wines, read books and magazines and generally live like humans in luxury. Meanwhile, the other animals outside Project S are tortured with horrific experiments.
The beasts in the experiment include
- Philip Masterson-Bowie the horse (voiced by Steve Coogan)
- Niall the rabbit (voiced by Arthur Mathews)
- Winona Matthews the pit bull (voiced by Amelia Bullmore)
- Hugh Gape the monkey (voiced by Kevin Eldon)
- Claire Franchetti the rat (voiced by Julia Davis)
- Mark Andrews the sparrow (also voiced by Steve Coogan)
- Kieron the cat (voiced by Simon Pegg)
A group of animal rights extremists break into the laboratory to rescue the subjects. Kieron is left behind, having his head removed from the rest of his body and being kept alive by machines. As the other beasts are boarded into the activists' truck they don't know what's going on, and are joined by Niall, a rabbit from an earlier batch of Project S which can only speak computer advice.
When one of the beasts asks the activists if they will be stopping for a toilet break, they panic and crash the truck into a tree. The beasts escape, and go their separate ways. After running into humans who are shocked, and other animals who can't speak human, they deduce they have somehow been transported into an alternate reality where only humans have a complex language and all other animals are enslaved by them.
Meanwhile, Vivi-Sec UK has Kieron's head grafted onto the body of a gorilla and is sent out to assassinate the other beasts. Vivi-Sec UK also alerts the media that dangerous human-speaking beasts are on the loose.
The beasts take shelter in an elderly lady's house, who calls her psychiatrist to tell him that there are human-speaking beasts at her house. Believing the elderly lady to have snapped, he has the medics take her away, leaving the beasts to live in her house.
[edit] Episodes
- "London Calling" (10 May 04)
- "Planet of the Men and Women" (17 May 04)
- "Money" (24 May 04)
- "My Fair Mare" (31 May 04)
- "A Star Is Hatched" (7 Jun 04)
- "Home" (14 Jun 04)
[edit] Trivia
- The title comes from the famous quote in The Elephant Man.
- The narrator was John Shrapnel
