Entering a Strange World of ‘Creatures’

As a senior vice president at Maryland Public Television, Leo Eaton often would hear 20 to 30 show ideas a week. But something about Martin and Chris Kratt’s 1992 proposal for a wildlife adventure series for children got Eaton’s attention.

It wasn’t that Eaton wanted to know more about the wild ponies of Assateague Island, Md. Nor was it the production value of a seven-minute tape the Kratts edited with a borrowed VCR in the basement of their parents’ Warrenton, N.J., home.

Eaton was drawn to the Kratts’ off-the-wall visual comedy and their passion for the natural world. It helped too that Eaton’s 4-year-old son watched the tape about 20 times, seconding the opinion of schoolchildren who had seen the Kratts’ adventures from Costa Rica and Madagascar--self-shot and financed with the help of college grants and fellowships.

“I think to keep him quiet, I had to do something with these guys,” Eaton joked.

Alexander Eaton is 8 now and has 50 half-hour episodes of “Kratts’ Creatures” to watch, the result of nearly a year of shooting in North America, Central America, Africa and Australia.

The PBS weekday series that debuted June 3, with Leo Eaton as executive producer, retains the wacky appeal of the Kratts’ prototypes. It also has a professional look that combines animation, drama and special effects with a fast-paced musical beat sure to attract elementary- and middle-school audiences.

“It’s a hyphenate,” said Eaton, “a kids-nature-wildlife-comedy-adventure-documentary.”

“Kratts’ Creatures” is not like the stuffy wildlife series the brothers watched as children. “None of those shows talked to kids,” Chris Kratt said. “The vast majority were pretty slow-paced. We wanted kids to learn about all the amazing animals that share our planet with us, and we thought we should come up with a style that suited our audience.”

Thus, the Kratts take their viewers on a joyous “exploration of the world.” They share a mud bath with baby elephants, swing with the monkeys in a rain forest and don striped costumes to mingle with zebras on an African savannah.

“We try to show things from the animals’ point of view, not from the anthropomorphic perspective,” Martin Kratt said. “We get right in there with the animals and look at what makes them happy, what makes them sad, what they are afraid of.”

The Kratts regard themselves as Earth’s creatures, so instead of telling what the animals are like, they demonstrate.

The Kratts taught three orphan chimps to use sticks to crack open figs--and, apparently, a camera.

“We lost a lens but got a great moment for the show,” Martin Kratt said.

The Kratts also learned from the animals. They spent so much time with red foxes that they acquired their scent--then used acquired tricks to escape hunting dogs.

“Kids are laughing at it, but they are getting it,” Eaton said.

Viewers “can understand the animals better, because they can relate to the problems we’re having imitating them,” Chris Kratt explained.

Producing the show with Paragon Entertainment of Canada took $6.5 million and 10 film units, including six wildlife film crews.

“The logistics of putting this show together were horrendous,” said Eaton, who also developed “To the Contrary” and “Seapower: A Global Journey” while at Maryland Public Television. “These guys, in effect, spent almost a year on the road,” with just brief trips home.

In Costa Rica, Chris Kratt got dengue fever. That trip also included a storm that stranded the crew on a beach overnight and overturned a boat carrying their camera equipment (in waterproof bags).

A flash storm in Africa also kept the Kratts overnight in a Jeep, where they fended off curious lions. In Australia, a Tasmanian devil sneaked up on Martin and put a paw on his knee. However, he said, “we know the [warning] signs and when to back off. We never really had a dangerous situation.”

Nature usually cooperated: Production was hampered by just one rain day during the year.

The Kratts’ interest in wildlife was sparked by family camping vacations in Vermont. Home movies of their caring for animals are occasionally seen in the series--a little touch that helps emphasize that they are not actors.

“Our ignorance was our salvation,” Chris said. “We would have had to think twice about spending four years on a total gamble. We were just following our dream.”

Chris, 30, is a biologist; Martin, 26, has a zoology degree. But because of their youth and enthusiasm, “Chris and I represent big-brother figures to our audience,” Martin Kratt said.

In fact, after seeing a tape of the Kratts’ covering their faces with mud like hyenas, a 6-year-old girl asked, “Does your mother let you do that?”

That and much more. “Kratts’ Creatures” employs animated creature Ttark and 15-year-old computer whiz Allison (played by Shannon Duff) to help the guys on their adventures and fill in the audience on animal facts.

“Allison represents the audience,” Chris Kratt said. “She loves animals and is starting to explore and learn more about them.”

* “Kratts’ Creatures” airs weekdays at 4:30 p.m. on KCET-TV Channel 28.