Zoo Quest was a series of multi-part nature documentaries broadcast on BBC television between 1954 and 1963. It was the first major programme to feature David Attenborough.
In each series, Attenborough travelled with staff from London Zoo to a tropical country to capture an animal for the zoo's collection (the accepted practice at the time). Although the programme was structured around the quest for the animal, it also featured film of other wildlife in the area and of the local people and their customs. Attenborough introduced each programme from the studio and then narrated the film his team had shot on location. At the end of each series, the animals the team had captured were introduced in the studio, where experts from the zoo discussed them.
With the exception of the original 1954 series, (which survives as edited compilations repeated the following year) all episodes of Zoo Quest exist in the BBC Archives. The series was the most popular wildlife programme of its time in Britain, and established Attenborough's career as a nature documentary presenter.
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Famous quotes containing the words zoo and/or quest:
“The zoo cannot but disappoint. The public purpose of zoos is to offer visitors the opportunity of looking at animals. Yet nowhere in a zoo can a stranger encounter the look of an animal. At the most, the animal’s gaze flickers and passes on. They look sideways. They look blindly beyond.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)
“Thou art the unanswered question;
Couldst see thy proper eye,
Alway it asketh, asketh;
And each answer is a lie.
So take thy quest through nature,
It through thousand natures ply;
Ask on, thou clothed eternity;
Time is the false reply.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)