Farthing Wood Deaths Revisited: Series 1 - Mr. Pheasant

To say that Mr. Pheasant was upset by the death of his mate would be a serious understatement, though if it’s any consolation, he wouldn’t outlive her for long.  Of all the deaths in Series 1, his is the one that I find to be the most flat-out infuriating, for reasons that I’ll get to in due course.  I will say that Fox's early naivety as a leader really shines through in this particular episode - not only does he make a very questionable decision regarding Mr. Pheasant (one that predictably ends in tragedy), but Owl points out how he could also be held responsible for a near-miss involving one of the younger animals, who winds up on the wrong end of a snare and is spared thanks to Owl's wisdom and Mole's talents as a tunneler.

Although most of the surviving animals are able to escape from the barn by having Mole and Badger dig them to freedom, there is one slight snag – Adder, who kept Bruno the dog occupied throughout the escape process, is left behind, something which nobody else cottons onto until they're all recovering in the safety of a copse.  Now, of all the Farthing predators, Adder is by far the most despised and least trusted (something which Adder herself quite gleefully plays up to in her constant taunting of the smaller animals), so a percentage of the group are quite happy to press on and leave her behind.  Fox and Badger point out that Adder had played a vital role in their escape, and that they owe it to her not to abandon her.  Mr. Pheasant volunteers to go back - motivated, he mournfully declares, by a desire to see his wife’s final resting place, although Hare (who never really got along with Pheasant) believes that Pheasant just wants to make an exhibition.  All the same, Pheasant does return to the farm and try to find Adder, and it goes every bit as disastrously as you would expect.

Pheasant spies the freshly-cooked body of his mate, which the farmer’s wife had left to cool upon the windowsill, and breaks down into uncontrollable tears.  His crying attracts unwelcome attention and, worse still, the tears impair his vision, meaning that he cannot see the farmer pointing his shotgun right at him.  Adder tries to warn him, but to no avail.  Hearing the gunshot all the way over in the copse, the animals suspect that the worst has happened and send Owl to investigate.  She has more luck in finding Adder, and the two are reunited with the main party.  When Fox asks Owl what became of Pheasant, she loftily replies, “You need me to tell you?”

HORROR FACTOR: 4. Not only is this a foregone conclusion from the moment that Pheasant leaves the copse and struggles to even lift himself off the ground, but the very deliberate sense of déjà vu in the build-up to this death (once again it’s Bruno the dog who gives the unfortunate game bird away) makes it a little less shocking and a lot more groan-worthy than his wife’s death (in a bowl-of-petunias-oh-no-not-again kind of way).  Still, the very idea of being confronted with the chargrilled body of your recently-deceased partner is enough to make anybody’s stomach churn.

NOBILITY FACTOR: 7. Hare’s cynicism aside, going back for Adder was a highly courageous (if rather foolhardy) act on Pheasant’s part.  That said, of all the Series 1 deaths, this one does feel, more so than any of the others, like a shameless contrivance just to be rid of the character in question.  I do have to question how Fox could have tasked someone as vulnerable and incompetent as Pheasant with such a dangerous mission in the first place.  Wouldn’t it have been far more sensible just to send Owl from the start?  Not one of Fox’s better leadership decisions, I have to say.  And yet it's the baby rabbit's horrific but non-fatal encounter with a snare for which he takes the most flack.

TEAR-JERKER FACTOR: 6. He may not have been the most sympathetic character overall, but in the end you’ve got to feel sorry for Pheasant.  He was doomed from the second he left Farthing Wood.

OVERALL RATING: 17

As a side note, Mr. Pheasant’s death is the only one that Badger does not see fit to mention in his opening narration for the following episode (and yes, that does include the Newts).  So you could have easily skipped this episode and never known what became of him.

Farthing Wood Deaths Revisited: Series 1 - Mrs. Pheasant

As noted, the series went fairly easy upon us with the first death.  When Mrs. Pheasant died in the following episode, however, it marked the moment when shit really got real.  And, as a kid, when this episode first aired, I could hardly believe what I was seeing.  Having not read the book in advance (and not fully taken on board the implications of the Newts’ fate at the time), it had never occurred to me that some of the characters might not make it to White Deer Park on account of being bumped off along the way.

With hindsight, it’s not so surprising that the Pheasants would be next to go after the Newts, given that they were only mildly higher up on the hardiness scale.  They couldn’t fly half as well as the other birds, and Mr. Pheasant in particular had a morbid (albeit justified) paranoia that the world outside of Farthing Wood was just one perpetual game shoot.  Mr. Pheasant was also one of the more ridiculous members of the Farthing Wood troupe, both self-pitying and highly conceited, while his long-suffering wife doted upon him and took his unappreciative remarks with little objection.

The animals are crossing farmland when they get caught in a heavy storm, an outcome hindering to everyone but Toad and Adder.  They decide to shelter in a barn, with the birds taking turns in keeping a look-out for signs of trouble.  Mr. Pheasant is supposed to be on look-out duty next, but he’s too intent on getting his beauty sleep, so Mrs. Pheasant graciously goes in his place.  She winds up drifting off herself, but wakes up in time to realise that the storm has eased and that there’s an extremely pissed-off farmer with a shotgun standing nearby, angry because his mastiff, Bruno, has failed to prevent his chicken coop from being raided by an uninvited predator.  Mrs. Pheasant wastes no time in heading to the barn to warn the others, but while the farmer is too caught up in ranting at Bruno to spot her, Bruno himself isn’t quite so oblivious, and barks to alert his master.  The farmer fires his shotgun, and Mrs. Pheasant never makes it as far as the barn.

HORROR FACTOR: 8. The moment of death itself technically occurs off-screen, but is nevertheless quite shocking (particularly to those who didn’t know in advance that it was coming) and totally unambiguous. We do also later get a full-on glimpse of the farmer carrying her lifeless body away.

NOBILITY FACTOR: 8. Mrs Pheasant died whilst trying to warn the other animals about the farmer and the dog.  I do have to take into consideration the fact that she fell asleep while she was supposed to be keeping watch - perhaps if she hadn’t, then she might have been able to react faster and the whole disaster could have been averted.  I also have to take into consideration that, by taking a bullet herself, it meant that the farmer was subsequently out of ammunition when he spotted Fox in the barn.

TEAR-JERKER FACTOR: 5. The image of Mrs Pheasant’s lifeless body in the hands of the farmer is a fairly affecting one.  The only character who treats her death with any form of sentiment, however, is Mr. Pheasant – the other animals quickly become preoccupied with the far more pressing matter of their own fate.

OVERALL RATING: 21

Farthing Wood Deaths Revisited: Series 1 - The Newts

The very first Farthing Wood death is a relatively easy one upon the viewer, in that it occurs entirely off-screen and is only really hinted at, prompting some fans to question whether it even happened at all.  Indeed, I imagine that my decision to include the Newts in this retrospective at all may trigger a bit of a negative reaction from viewers who’ll insist that, actually, the Newts’ fate is technically unknown and we can never say for sure.  I include the Newts here because 1) the odds were definitely not in their favour and 2) Badger has clearly accepted the Newts for dead, and I believe that the series wants us to trust his judgement on this one.

From the outset, the Newts always looked like they were going to struggle to complete the long trek to White Deer Park more than any other animal.  Not only were they smallest of the Farthing Wood creatures (fun fact: the show's magazine tie-in, Farthing Wood Friends, left them out of a sticker collection in which the characters were all rendered to scale because they were too small, which apparently prompted a lot of readers to write in and complain), but they were not adept to travelling across long distances on land.  Making it through a housing estate to a swimming pool on the very first night of the journey proves a painful enough slog for them.  Well aware of these weaknesses, the Newts choose to settle in the first viable habitat they come across – a marshland adjacent to an army-training ground.  Fox can see the Newts’ point, so he doesn’t object to leaving them behind.

Later in the episode, fire breaks out in the local area on account of human stupidity, and a few of the animals, having been separated from the others, barely escape with their lives.  Among them is Toad, who remarks upon how fortunate they were that the wind was blowing in the opposite direction, causing the fire to spread back the way they had come instead of toward them.  Badger, however, realises the full horror of this – the fire would have completely obliterated the Newts and their new home.  When, later in the episode, Mole, another straggler, is reunited with the other animals, he asks what happened to the Newts, Badger simply responds, “Don’t ask.”

I’m sure that denial amongst fans over the Newts’ fate was fuelled in some part by the aforementioned Farthing Wood Friends – in their character profile for the Newts they included the line “The animals fear that the newts have died, but who knows?  They might have gone into the water and survived.”  Sorry, but that’s not how it works.  Even if they were able were avoid the fire by going into the water, they would still have been suffocated by the smoke.  And, if they had miraculously managed to live through that, then the surrounding habitat would have been completely destroyed, making it impossible for the Newts to continue to thrive in their marshland home for very long.  The Newts are indeed goners.

HORROR FACTOR: 5. Happens entirely off-screen, although the understated manner in which Badger comes to the realisation that the Newts most likely did not survive is nevertheless pretty chilling.

NOBILITY FACTOR: 4. The Newts were the tragic victims of circumstance which could so easily have been avoided if some idiot human had learned to extinguish their cigarettes properly (or to not discard them in long grasses, period).  Nonetheless, they did set a pretty potent example to the other animals as to what could happen if they failed to stick together, and in that sense they did not die in vain.

TEAR-JERKER FACTOR: 7. The Newts were only around for a very limited time, but they were fairly likeable characters (enough to prompt a bit of outrage amongst readers when they were left out of a sticker collection), and I’m sure their vulnerability gave them an underdog charm which had many viewers rooting for them to make it all the way to White Deer Park.  Sadly it was dashed almost immediately.

OVERALL RATING: 16

Farthing Wood Deaths Revisisted: An Introduction

If you were a child growing up in the UK in the early to mid 90s, then odds are that you encountered The Animals of Farthing Wood at some time or another. Based on a series of novels by Colin Dann, and featuring the voices of Rupert Farley (Fox), the late Ron Moody (Badger) and Sally Grace (Owl), the animated series was absolutely huge back then, at least if the buzz in my particular school playground was anything to go by. I was eight years old when it first started airing, in 1993, and I became a devotee almost immediately. I read all of the Colin Dann books, I collected every single issue of the tie-in magazine, Farthing Wood Friends, I completed the Panini sticker album (ordinarily I lacked the patience or devotion required to see a Panini sticker album through to completion – Farthing Wood was the major exception), and I even dragged my family to London just to see a Farthing Wood Xmas grotto they were hosting at one of the major department stores (Harrods, I believe?) at the end of that year.

I don’t think that it’s unfair to acknowledge that Dann’s initial book owed more than a slight debt to Richard Adams’ vastly superior* Watership Down – in fact, the basic storyline was more or less identical to the first half of Adams’ novel. When the only home they’ve ever known is bulldozed to make room for a housing estate, a group of wild animals are forced on a perilous journey across human-modified landscape in the hopes of reaching a new haven (in Farthing Wood’s case, a nature reserve named White Deer Park). The obvious difference is that, whereas Watership Down focused exclusively upon the rabbits’ eye-view (with only one major non-rabbit character, a seagull), Farthing Wood was very much an inter-species affair. Predator and prey alike had to learn to set aside their differences and band together for the common good. This was achieved through something known as “The Oath of Mutual Protection”, which in practice just meant that the bigger/more useful animals looked out for the smaller/weaker ones, who seldom got a chance to fulfil the “mutual” element of their pact.

I haven’t read the books since primary school, but I recall the series being more or less faithful to the original story. The only major difference was that a handful of characters who were males in the book were changed into females in the interests of a more gender-diverse cast (note that Kestrel, despite being characterised as a female, clearly had male plumage – I suspect that it was unintentional, but that doesn’t stop my adult self from interpreting the character as transgender). Fox was chosen to lead the animals along the way, and while this decision was not greeted with universal enthusiasm (Owl, being the most intelligent of the animals, was resentful that he was chosen over her, and Hare initially disliked having to look up to a natural predator) by the end of the series he had proven his leadership mettle, and the majority of the Farthing Wood creatures had made it safely to White Deer Park. Unfortunately, there were a few rather traumatic losses along the way, and that’s what this particular retrospective is going to be focusing upon.

The fact that Farthing Wood wasn’t afraid to bump off sympathetic characters on a regular basis is one of the things that really set it apart from other children’s shows of its era. The deaths were one of the key things I recall people really talking about back then – whenever an episode rolled around in which one or more characters met their tragic/gruesome end, it immediately became the talk of the playground. We couldn’t get over the fact that so many of these cute and vulnerable little creatures, whom we so desperately wanted to wanted to see make it all the way to White Deer Park, were being crushed, devoured or otherwise obliterated. I encountered a number of people who even refused to watch the series at all because they thought that it was “too sad”.  At the same time, the deaths were one of the things that people really "liked" about the series - it made it feel extra suspenseful, and ensured that the stakes for the characters were always very high. Since it’s the aspect of the show that seemed to have the biggest impact, I thought that it would be interesting to do a retrospective on it, by digging up those memories of childhood horror and seeing how they measure up to adult scrutiny. Hence we have “Farthing Wood Deaths: Revisited”.

A total of eleven characters died during the first series, although a number of them went together, leaving us with six different incidents of death in total. Given that they were spread out over the course of thirteen episodes, that means that just less than half the episodes featured a tragic loss of some variety. For this retrospective, I’m going to be examining each death in detail and rating it in relation to three different factors, on a scale of 1 to 10:

HORROR FACTOR: This refers to how shocking or violent the death in question was. Farthing Wood wasn’t exactly graphic in its depiction of death (expect nothing at the level of Martin Rosen’s 1978 feature film adaptation of Watership Down), but some instances certainly were pushing the trauma boundaries a little hard, particularly in light of the school-aged target audience.  A perfect 10 indicates that they went about as far as they could possibly go within the confines of being relatively kid-friendly.

NOBILITY FACTOR: This rates the overall worthiness of the cause for which each character died. While only one or two deaths were arguably the result of some form of intentional self-sacrifice, there were a number who died whilst trying to help the other animals, and that deserves recognition. Note that if a character dies of old age (also a rare occurrence), they get an automatic 10. Nothing more noble than simply slipping away when your time has reached its natural end and enabling the cycle of life to continue.

TEAR-JERKER FACTOR: How likely the death is to make you cry. Some deaths were certainly played up for tears more than others.

Note also that while I intend to cover both Series 1 and 2, I will NOT be covering any of the deaths from Series 3, because I honestly didn't care for Series 3 (the same goes for the Colin Dann book that it was predominantly based upon) and I would sooner not have to revisit it, even in the interests of completism. I think that there were only actually two major character deaths in Series 3, anyway – the rest were all reserved for nondescript villainous henchmen. Let’s just give it an instant zero on all counts.

One final note – as of the time of writing, The Animals of Farthing Wood has still yet to be released on DVD in the UK. You might be able to get hold of one of the old VHS releases on Ebay or Amazon Marketplace, although keep in mind that these do not contain the full episodes, merely edited versions. But here's a hot tip - the full series has been released on DVD in Germany, and these do contain the English audio.

UPDATE: As of October 2016, the complete series of The Animals of Farthing Wood has been released in the UK as a DVD box set.  I personally happen to think that the Germans got the better deal, however.  There, they released each of the series individually, meaning that you weren't obligated to own Series 3 just to get the two really good ones.

*The fact that I’ve not read any books in the Farthing Wood series since I was in primary school notwithstanding, I do remember deeming them as somewhat ersatz once I’d moved onto Adams’ book - which, admittedly, I also haven’t read in years. Note that while I do have a lot of admiration for the 1978 animated film, the 1999 animated TV series is another matter altogether - that actually felt like an ersatz answer to the animated Farthing Wood series.  Which is a topic for another entry at another time.