It’s 30 Years Since The Animals Of Farthing Wood Traumatised a Generation

While the second and third series adapted the later books set in White Deer Park, that first series is stunningly bleak right from the word go. The animals are literally refugees, with the families of smaller creatures like rabbits or mice often befalling the most harrowing fates.

For the Newts, There Was No Escape

The first characters to be written out are a family of adorable newts. Needing to live by water, they decide to remain by a marsh while the others go on. The marshland is soon set ablaze by a discarded cigarette, and while we never see their fate, the “Previously on…” voice over on the next episode ominously explains that “For the newts, there was no escape.”

That’s pretty minor league though compared to what’s to come. The pheasants, portrayed as a bumbling lovable old couple, are the next to suffer, and the first characters whose deaths we actually get to see properly. The animals come across a farmhouse, and as becomes the formula for most episodes, they think that it might be a safe place to hide out. But of course, there are humans, and wherever there are humans, there is danger. In this case it’s a farmer with a shotgun, who takes out the female pheasant.

Like most of the human characters on the show, we don’t see the farmer’s face, just his feet and the shotgun. The gun almost becomes anthropomorphized, with the two barrels looking like cold, uncaring eyes, starring back at us from the TV. What makes it so horrible is that after the pheasant’s death, the other characters actively make fun of her partner’s grief and one of the rabbits even pretends to play a mock violin in front of him! (How do woodland creatures know what a violin is?) Eventually the male pheasant proves himself to be a hero, going back to the farm to rescue Adder, who was left behind. But instead of this act finally gaining him the respect of peers, he is faced with the image of his wife’s corpse, now plucked and ready to be cooked, and while understandably freaking out about it, is also shot by the farmer.

Hapless Hedgehogs and a Thorny End for Baby Mice

Other characters meet their end in equally horrible ways. A young rabbit is shot in front of his parents. The hedgehogs, who are also portrayed as a sitcom-style old husband and wife, are killed when they are run over while the animals dash across a busy motorway. What makes it particularly harrowing is that this happens near the end of the series, and the motorway is really the final major obstacle between them and White Deer Park. They were so close. As the hedgehogs dawdle across the tarmac, they keep stopping in fear and curling into balls — when what they really need to do is keep moving. They’ve almost already accepted their end. The female hedgehog hopelessly begging her husband not to curl up in front of the incoming wheel of an articulated lorry has genuinely haunted me for years.

The most notorious image from The Animals Of Farthing Wood, though, comes during the seventh episode. The field mice have a litter of babies, and spend the majority of the episode keeping them safe. Eventually they decide to hang back a while as the rest of the party moves on. However, not long after, Hare notices a bird of prey flying overhead with a mouse dangling from its beak. As he rushes back, he discovers a scene that is really hard to believe was broadcast on kids’ TV. Hare finds the bird impaling the baby mouse on a thorns of a dead bush, with the mouse’s siblings having already had the same fate. Blood pours out of them. For most of the other deaths on the show, it cuts away right at the final moment. But here the camera lingers on the gory detail.