The Totally Unofficial Noah's Ark Calendar for December 1998.
I am ending the year by returning to one of the first images I captured from Noah's Ark. This will if fact be the last of the Noah's Ark calendars. For next year, I am hoping to add sounds and images from both Highlander:Raven and Cold Squad to this site.
| Dec '97 | Jan '98 | Feb '98 | Mar '98 | Apr '98 | May '98 | Jun '98 | Jul '98 | Aug '98 | Sep '98 | Oct '98 | Nov '98 |
This page provides a weekly episode guide, sound clips and pictures from Peter Wingfield's series for ITV, Noah's Ark, which started broadcasting on Monday 8th September 1997. This last episode of the first series was broadcast on Monday 13 October 1997. The second series of Noah's Ark began broadcasting on Friday September 18th, but sadly without Peter Wingfield, who has joined the cast of the Canadian series Cold Squad. Tom Kirby has apparently joined a practice in Florida. After three episodes, Clare Somers also departed from Melton, to join her ex-husband out in Africa..
Disclaimer - 'Noah's Ark' is the property of Whitehall Films. All the material here is used without permission. No commercial gain is made from this website.
As well as pictures, there are sounds scattered about the site. If
you click on a bit of text that looks like a link and has a (Þ)
symbol next to it, you may well find PW (or someone else) talking to you.
| Tom Kirby - Peter Wingfield |  |
| Noah Kirby - Anton Rodgers |  |
| Val Kirby - Angela Thorne |  |
| Clare Somers - Orla Brady |  |
| Anna Lacey - Kate Alderton |  |
Written by - Johnny Byrne
Producers - Sue Bennett-Urwin and Michael Whitehall
Note that Peter Wingfield is not especially well known over here - Highlander Season 3 and beyond have only been seen on satellite TV, and he is best known for his radio role, Simon Pemberton in the Archers. So Anton Rodgers and Angela Thorne, who are very well known, are getting top billing. But judging by the first episode, the roles of Tom and Clare are pretty much as important as that of Noah, and more important than that of Val.
NOTE: for reasons that most of the visitors to this site will understand, this introduction is written from a Tom-centric point of view.
Noah and Tom Kirby, father and son, are both vets. Noah has a country practice, and is still running it much as he did when Tom was a child. He wants Tom to join the practice - but Tom has other, and bigger, ideas. He has just quit his job with a large multi-national company, and has returned home for what he intends to be a flying visit - disillusioned, but a lot richer (Þ). But while he is there, his father has a car crash brought on by a dizzy spell. It is clear that he badly needs full time help. Tom is reluctantly drawn into helping - temporarily of course - out while his father recovers. But then there is Clare Somers, the local wildlife vet, to consider - is she enough to tempt Tom to stay?
Episode One - in which Tom Kirby quits his job and returns home, his father has a car crash, a mare is poisoned and foals prematurely, and one of a pair of rare red kites is shot and wounded.
Episode Two - in which an arthritic pony is sold to a little girl by an unscrupulous dealer, Clare and Tom track down a smuggler of wild animals with a shipload of seriously ill lemurs, Tom proves what a good surgeon he is with a difficult eye operation on a elderly dog, and Noah shows how to break a pony to the saddle in under thirty minutes.
Episode Three- in which a valuable cow dies, apparently as a result of Noah's negligence, a badger newly-released into the wild disappears in suspicious circumstances, the conflict between Noah and Tom comes to a head, and the chemistry between Clare and Tom continues to bubble.
Episode Four - in which Val and Noah help a young vagrant living rough in the woods - despite the fact that his dog is suspected of sheep worrying - and Tom, bowled over by a friend of Clare's, agrees to stay at her farm for a couple of weeks to try a revolutionary treatment on her horses.
Episode Five - in which Val becomes suspicious of Noah's growing friendship with a new client, Tom and Clare are sent on a strange mission to rescue an injured golden eagle, and Noah forces Tom finally to choose whether to join the practice as a full partner.
Episode Six - in which Tom goes for a high-powered job interview in London, Clare keeps him at a distance, and an ostrich gives him a very painful kick. Meanwhile, Noah is revealing his plans for the surgery to Clare.
Kat's Review- well, after six weeks of eating, sleeping and breathing Noah's Ark, I figure I'm entitled to express an opinion.
Your favourite images- The images you voted for are now available for download in large format.
A few cast notes about the 'other' regular actors in Noah's Ark. Some of this information is courtesy of the IMdB. (For more information about Peter Wingfield, please go to the Peter Wingfield Fan Club Page.)
Anton Rodgers is best known for his sit-com roles as Alec Callendar in May to December and as Henry Fields in Fresh Fields. But if you go back far enough, he was one of the long series of guest actors who played Number 2 in The Prisoner. Those of you with children may also recognise him as the voice of behind Jane Hissey's Old Bear stories.
Angela Thorne likewise has a track record for sitcom, playing Marjory in To The Manor Born and Daphne in Three Up,Two Down. But one of her first appearances was as Lady Leicester in Elizabeth R. In the early eighties she was one of the first actresses to do Margaret Thatcher impersonations! She has recently appeared as Mrs Hawk-Monitor in the film of Cold Comfort Farm.
Orla Brady and Kate Alderton were both in the recent series Heart Surgeon with Nigel Havers. Kate also had a small part in Fierce Creatures. (She is, I think, the daughter of John Alderton and Pauline Collins.) Orla Brady also appeared in Out of the Blue, and the Irish film Words on Window Pane, based on a play by W.B. Yeats. She is shortly to appear as Cathy in a new television dramatisation of Wuthering Heights.
Johnny Byrne was one of the creators of All Creature's Great and Small, the long running series with Christopher Timothy, Peter Davidson and Robert Hardy based on the biographical stories of James Herriot, the Yorkshire vet. More recently, he worked on Heartbeat, a series about a rural policeman set in the 1960s.
Created by Phillip & Catriona Troth
Comments to webmaster@troth.demon.co.uk
Last updated 13/10/1997
