Zoo - 'First Blood', 'Fight or Flight', 'The Silence of the Cicadas' and 'Pack Mentality'

"Are we going to end up sleeping together?"

Across the globe, animals begin attacking humans. Coincidence, or the rise of a worldwide animal revolution, driven by outrage at man's destruction of the environment and marked by the 'defiant pupil', a distinctive discolouration of the eye, as if the black paint was running.

In Botswana, zoologist and safari guide Jackson Oz and his hetero life mate Abraham Kenyatta investigate the disappearance of the staff and residents of another camp. Abe is seemingly killed by a pride of male lions, but Oz rescues French tourist Chloe Tousignant and sees a connection with the work of his late father, genius turned obsessive nutjob Robert Oz, who believed that one day the animal kingdom would rise up and kick mankind out of the top spot for being a bunch of planet-wrecking jerks.

Back in the good old USA, a pair of zoo lions kill their keeper and go on a rampage before being shot. Annoying journalist Jamie Campbell harasses antisocial veterinary pathologist Mitch Morgan to press the investigation into their deaths, hoping to link them to biotech giant Reiden Global. They also discover that all the cats in a particular neighbourhood have apparently decided to hang out near a day camp like a feline remake of The Birds, until Campbell calls animal control and they all bog off home.

Oz gets a call from Abe, and tracks him to a tree where the lions have been keeping him, apparently intending that he be rescued and tell the world that they're mad as hell and not going to take it any more. The doctor examining the victims is Oz's mother, and they talk about how his father was crazy, right? Except that the lions killed without predating, and with a refined and consistent methodology across six different males who shouldn't even have been hanging together.

"Are we going to end up sleeping together?"

In Slovenia, we meet our first victims of the week; a British couple adopting an orphan. They agree to take him to the circus to see tigers, which don't eat him. Instead a small dog steals the boy's stuffed tiger to lure the father into an ambush, then thoughtfully returns the toy. Meanwhile Mitch and Jamie find altered brain chemistry and evidence of a leonine hive mind, which oddly enough does not convince a senator to reopen investigations into Reiden.

'Psychic lions, you say? Clearly a case of pesticide induced telepathy.' I can't imagine what self-respecting politician wouldn't pin their re-election campaign on that one. Different story if the lions were Muslim, I'll bet.

Chloe, who is an intelligence analyst, is recruited by a vaguely sinister yet awesome French official to lead a task force investigating these animal killings. She also has a bitch off with her sister, who slept with her fiance. Flow to Slovenia, she assesses the dog attack and others like it as similar to human serial killers honing their skills.

Don't even think it, mate."

Abe accompanies Oz to Japan in search of his father's research. They meet Robert's second wife/widow, but their helicopter is brought down by a swarm of bats. The pilot and the widow are killed, but Oz and Abe find their way to Robert's old lab, where he was experimenting on preventing the defiant pupil thing by gouging out animals' eyes. When the rads shoot up they are rescued by sinister Frenchman who recruits them, along with Mitch and Jamie, to join Team Chloe.

Our next victims of the week are the staff of a penitentiary in Mississippi, who are slaughtered by wolves who break in to rescue a death row inmate. This inmate, who was arrested for murdering a group of hunters, completely out of nowhere, also has the defiant pupil and is apparently the pack's new alpha. He confronts Mitch and Abe in the woods while they track the pack, then kills a hunter and steals his clothes. The team pick up a dying wolf and discover a bacterium in its brain that makes coconuts explode (there's some biology about electrolytes) while Chloe fends off a pushy FBI agent, and Jamie swipes evidence - including a picture of Robert Oz - and alienates local law enforcement.

And in Antarctica a pair of lesbian research scientists are killed by bats swarming on their solar panels. Four episodes and we're already burying the gays.

Zoo is basically a whole heap of nonsense about four pretty white folks and their badass black friend (played by blog fave Nonso Anozie) battling the evil of nature; or something. There may be more to the plot later, and who knows; maybe Jamie's assertion that Reiden Global are behind everything bad ever will turn out to have some validity. It will still be very annoying.