Watership Down (Season 4)



The fourth season of Watership Down. It is a British-Canadian animated fantasy children's television series, adapted from the novel by Richard Adams. It is a co-production of Alltime Entertainment of the United Kingdom and Decode Entertainment in Canada, and produced by Martin Rosen, the director of the 1978 feature film adaptation. It was produced with the participation of the Canadian Television Fund, the Canadian Film or Video Production Tax Credit and the Ontario Film and Television Tax Credit from the Government of Ontario.

Plot
Following the basic plot of the novel, Watership Down follows the lives of a group of rabbits as they leave their endangered warren in search of a safe new home. They travel across the English countryside, braving perilous danger, until they find a hill called Watership Down, where they begin a new warren. However, they are endangered by another warren, Efrafa, which is led by the authoritarian General Woundwort, and they are soon forced to defend their home and lives.

Although the first series concerned themselves mostly with elements taken from the original novel at first, later on in that same series as well as the second and third deviated almost entirely, with many episodes focusing solely on new characters and situations. For instance, in the second episode, "Home on the Down," Hazel realizes that having their own doe, Blackberry, do all the digging for their new burrow, the traditional role of does among rabbits, is unfair as well as counter-productive. Thus, he and Fiver must find a way to convince the other bucks to help her.

In addition, the third series featured a new opening sequence and style of animation, along with many of the original voice actors leaving, only leaving a handful of the original cast to remain. The programme became noticeably darker in tone, adding elements of mysticsm and magic, such as Campion's encounters with the Black Rabbit of Inle, Silverweed's psychic powers, though these would be similar to Fiver's own psychic powers and Hannah's learning of hedge magic.

Although the series was praised by younger audiences at the time of the series' air, fans of both the novel and the movie gave it mixed reviews due to drastic changes from the novel (like Blackberry changed from a buck to a doe) and its more child-friendly tone as compared to the violence of the movie. The third series changed this for a darker tone.