Zoo Quest

Zoo Quest
Series title card from Zoo Quest for a Dragon
Genre	Nature documentary
Presented by	David Attenborough
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Original language(s)	English
No. of series	7
No. of episodes	42
Production
Cinematography	Charles Lagus
Running time	30 minutes
Production company(s)	BBC Travel & Exploration Unit
Release
Original network	BBC Television Service
Picture format	Black and white, 4:3
Audio format	Mono
Original release	21 December 1954 (1954-12-21) – 31 May 1963 (1963-05-31)

Zoo Quest is a series of multi-part nature documentaries broadcast on the BBC Television Service between 1954 and 1963. It was the first major programme to feature David Attenborough.

In each series, Attenborough travelled with staff from London Zoo to a tropical country to capture an animal for the zoo's collection (the accepted practice at the time). Although the programme was structured around the quest for the animal, it also featured film of other wildlife in the area and of the local people and their customs. Attenborough introduced each programme from the studio and then narrated the film his team had shot on location. At the end of each series, the animals the team had captured were introduced in the studio, where experts from the zoo discussed them.

With the exception of the original 1954 series (which survives as edited compilations repeated the following year), all episodes of Zoo Quest exist in the BBC Archives. The series was the most popular wildlife programme of its time in Britain, and established Attenborough's career as a nature documentary presenter.

The seed for Zoo Quest was sown when Attenborough produced and presented a three-part nature programme, The Pattern of Animals, in the early 1950s. While researching animals for this programme, he befriended Jack Lester, the curator of the reptile house at London Zoo. Lester invited Attenborough to come along and film an expedition to Sierra Leone. In addition to capturing snakes for the zoo, Lester hoped to catch a white-necked rockfowl (Picathartes gymnocephalus), which had never been kept in a European zoo before. Attenborough, whose previous programmes had been studio-bound, was eager for a chance to film animals in the wild. He also thought the quest for the bird would make a compelling central story for the series. Attenborough and Lester were soon joined by a young Czech photographer, Charles Lagus, who would serve as Attenborough's cameraman and travelling companion throughout Zoo Quest's run. The team overcame the objections of BBC management to film the trip on 16mm film instead of the 35mm film that was then the Corporation's standard.