User reviews

This is one of those shows where you just aren't sure whether to love it or hate it but one thing is for sure. It's definitely not a children's animation. Decapitation, sexual fantasy, guns, jokes about the poor are just the beginning. This show is OUT there and i think i love it. But i recognize that it's crap. Like the 80's - it's terrible but god how we love to look back on glam rock and love ballads.

So basically, talking animals (a horse, an English bull dog, a monkey, a rat, and a sparrow) are created in a lab and set free by a misguided animal rights extremist. The animals then have to go from a life of luxury designed especially for them to one of utter poverty in a confused world where none of the other animals talk. They learn that meat comes from *gasp* other animals, That humans wont accept animals that talk, And that making money is harder than it looks. The rat has an over-sex-drive, The horse is an author, the sparrow is a wanna be singer cynic, the bull dog is a lady of breeding, and the monkey is a brain dead weirdo.

It's worth a couple episodes. You'll be in love, or so disgusted you have to turn it off or keep watching just to see what happens.

Just had to write a review, having seen the hostile/lukewarm considerations received so far. "I Am Not an Animal" is the best comedy show seen on the BBC for a long time, and I urge everyone to catch it when it's repeated. Mark the Bird is the most wittily observed of the main characters, his weary cynicism brilliantly played off against his belief in himself as a constantly thwarted singer-songwriter; Philip the Horse boasts superb voice acting from the ludicrously multi-talented Steve Coogan; and Winona the Dog provides the most cringeworthy pretensions of all the would-be human animals. The series is original, weird, observationally sublime and different to just about every other show out there at the moment. What it doesn't do is provide viewers with one of the two default options of British comedy: the whacky, light-hearted families of Butterflies and As Time Goes By or the ruthless, cruel parody of Alan Partridge and The League of Gentlemen (not that there's anything wrong with the latter). Highly recommended.

It was brilliant because it allowed the wackiness to be carried through without any flaws committed by poor writing.

Totally magic!

The pace of the writing was fresh, and given the potential that such a large canvas might cause the writers to fall down a hole, the characters lively interaction carried the basic premise (that is totally wacky) in an engaging way.

At the same time you might be feeling pity on the animals, laughing with them, laughing at them, and rooting for them all at the same time. Magic!

I saw the first episode of this when it was shown on the BBC and I didn't really enjoy it. But my best friend has the DVD and she wanted to watch a couple of episodes, so starting at episode 2 we watched the whole series.

It's brilliant - I didn't appreciate the humour (subtle and not so subtle) of the characters. The animation is outstanding - during 'Beigey' and her behaviour at the dinner party I actually forgot that I was watching a load of animals - the characters are so beautifully put together that they are complex and three-dimensional.

Brilliant. I'm off to buy myself the DVD now!

If you were to assemble a "super group" of comedy writers and performers, gathered from the very best shows of the last ten years on British TV, this is the sitcom they would make. Better than that, someone already did, and this IS that sitcom. In order for them to scamper freely through the whole field of their endless imagination, this couldn't possibly be the usual show about everyday people in a humorous situation. That's something that an ordinary show could do, but it takes something much more than ordinary to create a series about ugly, foolish, tragic creatures in a hopeless situation, that still makes you laugh and love them for it. The protagonists all have the bodies of animals despite being able to talk, so how can they expect to attain the lifestyles they're read about in the glossy magazines? The life of celebrity dinner parties is just as unobtainable for the animals that those magazines are written for, but they're no wiser to that fact than Winnona the dog or Philip the horse. The characters in "I am not an animal" are selfish, idiotic, spoilt and do ridiculous things, which makes them not only hilarious, but more realistically human than any other TV characters I can think of.

I saw this on the day it was released, and i couldn't help myself laughing! I thought it was terrific, the animation was both cheesy and clever. The acting was over the top but very funny and the characters were so goofy they made the show ace!

But for someone to like it they would have to like silly humour because thats what this show is.

It is about a group of animals who have been experimented on and they believe they are from the past when animals were rulers of the planet, as they wander the country trying to find a place to rest the, scientists fear that they might reveal the secrets of the testing sight. Having created a half cat half gorilla killing machine they send him out to capture the animals,hilarity ensues, thats basically it.

7/10!!!!!