Wild At Heart - Third Series
18 January 2008 - Award winning actress Jessie Wallace joins the cast of Wild at Heart for a third series of the popular family drama set in the wilds of the African bush.
Best known for her role as Kat Slater in EastEnders, Jessie will be trying out her stilettos in the African bush as Essex girl Amy Kriel. In South Africa to be with her husband Elliott, who has recently bought Mara the upmarket safari park next door to Leopard's Den, Amy is unimpressed by the dusty reality of small town South Africa and longs for the bright lights of home - until she meets Sarah.
This series Wild at Heart catches up with British vet Danny Trevanion (Stephen Tompkinson – Prime Suspect, Marian Again, In Denial of Murder) and his family as they strive to expand the veterinary practice and co-exist with their neighbours through a drought which grips the region.
Amanda Holden (Cutting It, Mad About Alice, Hearts and Bones) is Danny's wife, Sarah, busy juggling work and family life. And Lucy-Jo Hudson (Coronation Street), as daughter Rosie, is keen to prove herself an able vet assistant to her father while romancing bar owner Max (Martinus Van Der Berg).
Hayley Mills (Tiger Bay, Whistle Down the Wind, The Flame Trees of Thika) is Sarah's outspoken mother, Caroline and Deon Stewardson returns as the Trevanion's ill-tempered business partner Du Plessis.
This year the weather brought problems of its own to the show.
Producer Nick Goding says: "Having filmed for two months in blazing sunshine through the winter, during which we only had two hours of rain in ten weeks, we created a storyline featuring the drought. But two weeks into the final block, just as we started the drought episode, the weather changed dramatically and thunderstorms consistently interrupted filming.
Fortunately the director, Nick Laughland, had discussed this threat with the design and costume teams, and asked for no-one to wear green, and green to be avoided in all aspects of design outside so that we can grade the pictures to make South Africa look arid even though it has just had its wettest Spring for years. We even had to bring in truck loads of brown grass from nearby areas that had drier weather."
And the weather wasn't the only natural occurrence to hinder filming…
"When we started filming with the tiger cubs they were six weeks old, about 18 inches long and looked adorable. By the end of the third episode it became clear that we would have to use them a lot differently from planned as they were starting to maul the cast while playing with them. By the end of filming they were six months old, and about four feet long; standing on two legs, they were the same height as Lucy-Jo."
This year brought with it one of the biggest planned stunts in Wild at Heart's history. Nick explains: "The scene involved setting fire to the animal hospital that the Trevanians had fought so hard for. The burn had been planned and planned and planned. On the day we had five cameras to get the footage we needed to tell the story with the cast and fire in the same frame.
"The estimated burn time from ignition to structural collapse had been estimated at 25-30 minutes. Following several rehearsals without fire, but with covering smoke, we readied ourselves for the torching moment, and rolled cameras. Within four minutes of lighting the fuses, the whole structure was burnt to the ground, but still we managed to get the action shots!"
