Most of the colour is supplied by Anders Du Plessis (Deon Stewardson), a drunk, gambling-crazed Afrikaner whose infantile schemes to ward off the Afrispec threat only make matters worse.īut Wild at Heart seems to have tapped into several powerfully escapist themes. The various African characters are young and good-looking but dramatically trivial, while Christian Peeters (David Butler), the unscrupulous boss of the Afrispec mining company which is threatening to dig up Leopard's Den, exhibits all the delicately nuanced expression of an African burial mask.

His wife Alice (Dawn Steele) bears all this with pragmatic Scottish fortitude, but she's hardly a blazing comet of charisma streaking across the screen. This is baffling, because he's permanently grouchy, sullen and stressed-out, and even under blazing African skies he seems to tow a private black cloud around with him wherever he goes. How does it keep doing this? Evidently Stephen Tompkinson, playing Bristol vet Danny Trevanion who has transplanted himself to the Leopard's Den game reserve in South Africa, has a loyal legion of fans.

Wild at heart tv show leopards den