meerkat manor

• At 7, USA has coverage of the U.S. Open.
• At 8, ABC has a new Set For Life.
• The CW has a new Smackdown! at 8.
• Noggin has a new South of Nowhere at 8.
• At 8:30, Animal Planet has a new Meerkat Manor.
• Also at 8:30: Cartoon Network has a new My Gym Partner's A Monkey.
• At 9, NBC has a new Dateline.
• There's a new Survivorman on Discovery at 9.
• At 10, ABC has a new 20/20.
• Sci-Fi has a new Painkiller Jane at 10.
• Nicktoons has a new Nicktoons Film Festival at 10.
• E! has a new episode of The Soup at 10.

Check your local TV listings for more.

• At 7:30, ESPN2 has coverage of the Rogers Cup tennis tournament.
• At 8, CBS has the Bills vs. the Saints preseason football game.
• ABC has a new Set For Life at 8 (Boston area viewers will see a preseason game between the Patriots and Bucs).
• The CW has a Smackdown! at 8.
• PBS has a new NOW at 8, followed by new episodes of Washington Week and Bill Moyers Journal.
• Sci-Fi has a new Doctor Who at 8, then the series premiere of Flash Gordon.
• At 8, ESPN has coverage of the Little League World Series.
• At 8:30, Animal Planet has a new Meerkat Manor.
• At 9, Discovery has a new Survivorman.
• There's a new Monk on USA at 9, then a new Psych.
• At 10, E! has a new episode of The Soup.

Check your local TV listings for more.

If you haven't seen the new Animal Planet series Meerkat Manor, I encourage you to check it out. It's being promoted as a kind of mix between a soap opera and a nature documentary, but it's really not all that different than a normal nature documentary where they personalize the animals by giving them names and making them seem more "human" than they actual are. And, quite frankly, Meerkats are adorable creatures, so it works better than say, something like House of Maggots. Actually, that's not a bad idea for a show, either. Wait, it's not? Oh, okay. It also differs from a soap opera in that, unlike human soap operas, I actually care what happens to these animals. The series is narrated by Sean Astin. You can watch clips from the series here.

Sean Astin is lending his voice to an intriguing new series from Animal Planet. It's called Meerkat Manor, and it's part documentary, part soap opera. I'm not sure how exactly they're going to pull this off, but Astin will narrate thirteen episodes that follow the life and times of a meerkat family. The press release promises all the goodies we've come to expect from soap operas: from backstabbing to love affairs to family feuds. Apparently meerkats are quite the dramatic bunch. The writers even gave all the little fellas names like Zaphod (Beeblebrox?) and Shakespeare, and they're all part of the 'Whiskers' family.

The series begins Friday, June 9 at 8 pm (ET) on Animal Planet.