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`Life Is Wild` has creature comforts... |
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`Life Is Wild` has creature comforts
Category:
Television
Posted 2 years ago by
dclarizio
 Stephanie Niznik looks for beastly doings in `Life Is Wild.` ******************* "Life is Wild." Sunday night at 8, CW. ******************* Even if you`re not wild about "Life Is Wild," the drama series premiering Sunday, it deserves points for trying, in at least two respects. One, it`s a family drama - one the whole family can watch - at a time when that genre is all but extinct on network TV. Two, it`s filmed in South Africa, at a time when most "location shooting" means filming in Vancouver to cut costs. (Now that the Canadian dollar is stronger than ours, even that`s no longer true.) "Life Is Wild," at 8 on CW, is about Danny, a New York vet - as in veterinarian, not war veteran - who commits himself and his blended family to a one-year stay in South Africa. The always likable D.W. Moffett plays the vet, Stephanie Niznik of "Everwood" plays his new wife, Jo (a divorce lawyer), and a mini-"Brady Bunch" clan includes teen Katie (Leah Pipes) and preteen Chase (K`Sun Ray), along with rebellious teen Jesse (Andrew St. John) and sweet young Mia (Mary Matilyn Mouser). Katie gets to narrate, making "Life is Wild" a sort of "My So-Called Life on the Veldt." If it sounds familiar, that`s because you may have seen BBC America`s "Wild at Heart," on which this American version is based. Both film at the same wildlife park outside of Johannesburg. It`s also not that far, in spirit, from the TV series "Peaceable Kingdom" (where Lindsay Wagner was a zookeeper) and "Born Free" (the source of Clarence the Cross-Eyed Lion). And while some of the pilot strains to be contemporary with its youthful fixations, the only actor and character who really stands out is Atandwa Kani`s Tumelo, a native South African who connects with Katie. Otherwise, it`s the animals that make "Life is Wild" worth watching. There are lionesses and cubs, a cheetah, an elephant and giraffes, all sharing screen time with the human stars - and upstaging them every quadruped step of the way.
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