Raised By Wolves: What Wolfblood Means To Me

If you asked me to choose one TV show and one film that inspired me growing up, I would probably respond with Doctor Who and Coraline. I am a massive fan of both, and although they are vastly different from one another, they made their individual impact on me when inspiring me to write about film and TV. However, before I was a fan of either of those things, I was a Wolfblood fan. I acknowledge most of you will not have a clue what word I just typed, so allow me to fill you in.

Wolfblood was a fantasy series that aired on CBBC from 2012 to 2017 written by Debbie Moon (I doubt the surname was intentional), about a rotating cast of teenage characters who harbour a secret – they are Wolfbloods, who have the ability to change into wolves. The five series of the show explore ways in which these characters keep this secret and learn how to accept themselves, dealing with all of the struggles and threats that come from it. Wolfblood takes the core concepts of werewolf fiction and streamlines it into children’s drama. The show is grounded in reality as all of the kids go to school, have friendships and fallouts, and encounter teenage problems such as puberty and crushes. 

Are all of those things original concepts on their own? Of course not. It’s basically a PG version of Being Human, or Tracy Beaker with wolf stuff. However, for a show primarily aimed at pre-teens on a children-based network, Wolfblood had genuine love and care put into it, and the world that it created really stuck out to me.

I did have a lot of friends that I hung out with at primary school, but I wasn’t like my peers. Everyone else was on their Xbox 360s and watching Nickelodeon and Disney, but I was reading books and watching CBBC day after day. While CBBC still had low-brow kids’ stuff, it had shows like Tracy Beaker that provided entertainment for kids my age but also taught us about the world. We were getting a look into the adult world of the care system, with characters who have been let down by both their families and society, and it compelled me to start asking things about the world that a Key Stage 2 student wouldn’t normally ask. 

I recognise that Tracy Beaker has little to do with Wolfblood, but I’m merely setting the stall for the kind of things I watched and what I got out of them. Tracy Beaker Returns had ended by the time Wolfblood started one autumn evening in September 2012, and I was starting to get tired of memorising Tracy Beaker episodes. Good for me then, that Wolfblood gave me something else to completely obsess over. 

In hindsight, I began to wonder what attracted me to this show about people transforming into supernatural beings. My parents will tell you how the prospect of watching Michael Jackson’s Thriller instilled the fear of God in me, and a large part of my fear came from the thought of watching a strange man turn into a hideous thing right on camera. All that fear aside, I think the primary reason why I was obsessed with Wolfblood was that these characters weren’t strangers – they were so likeable and incredibly realised, and they learned to accept their Wolfblood lineage, the thing that makes them stand out, as a gift. I still think that the first series of the show is its strongest, as it’s the most rooted in character dynamics and genuinely smart storytelling. 

The show’s initial two leads, Aimee Kelly as Maddy Smith and Bobby Lockwood as Rhydian Morris, were brilliant characters, and within just a couple of episodes I was hooked, as their friendship blossoms and they learn more about their identity as Wolfbloods. The other two main characters, Shannon and Tom, are not Wolfbloods but are lifelong friends with Maddy, and so when Rhydian enters their lives and Maddy becomes more secretive and distant, their friendship is tested. Shannon has PTSD from seeing a ‘beast’ on the moors as a child and becomes determined to find evidence of it to prove her naysayers wrong. So that’s a bit of a problem for her two mates who change into wolves every full moon. 

Wolfblood is a show that did characters so well and, even if it’s appealing to a notably young base, it didn’t treat me or anyone else like idiots. Much like what I mentioned with Tracy Beaker, I honestly believe Wolfblood made me smarter and more aware of things around me. 

To share a personal anecdote, I had a bad allergic reaction around the time when Wolfblood started, and when my dad took me into A&E he started talking about Wolfblood to take my mind off it. I soon found that I wasn’t thinking about my rash and I was talking to my dad about werewolves, and the facts I was learning on Wolfblood about science and human evolution. That scientific interest has now completely gone in favour of history, but regardless it was what I was seeing on Wolfblood that was spurring me on to talk about these things. For God’s sake, it even inspired me to keep a small notepad observing the phases of the moon each day. Give me a break, I was seven years old. 

Going back and watching episodes of the show again now that I’m older has also been surprisingly enlightening, as I keep discovering new things the older I get. One, the fact that Series 1 Episode 6 features a guest appearance from now the well-known singer and North East treasure Sam Fender, but also that the show used fantasy tropes to explore adult themes, something that has really fascinated me now that I’ve been educated on these things.  

In one episode Maddy learns a special Wolfblood ability called Eolas, enabling her to connect with nature and experience all of her senses at the same time, a clear metaphor for drug and substance addiction that flew right over my head. Even the basic concept of transformation, when put into a kids’ drama context, can easily be seen as a representation of puberty or a religious rite of passage that carries this huge weight throughout life. 

I will still remember seeing Maddy’s first transformation, and being utterly transfixed. OK, it’s not the most visually magnificent thing, but for me that was a spine-tingling moment, watching these two teenage characters stare at the moon and turn into these majestic animals. That’s another thing that separates Wolfblood from other werewolf media – the transformations were not painful, there’s something beautiful about the way Wolfblood presented them. 

Transforming became more of a normal occurrence as the show went on, but that doesn’t mean the show wasn’t capable of finding new ways of developing its world. The introduction of the wild pack in Series 2 stands out to me, as these more primitive savage threats initially clash with the so-called ‘tame’ Maddy and Rhydian, but soon make peace and become allies. We even see how far Wolfbloods have expanded into modern society. Debbie Moon has spoken a lot about wanting to explore Wolfbloods as a whole, and not one specific group or location, so when the show opens up in its later series we realise there’s so much more to explore. The company Segolia, introduced in Series 3, has a predominately Wolfblood workforce, and they also play a very large part in the fourth and fifth series, which effectively serve as a soft reboot since most of the main characters have been written out by that point. 

I wasn’t as obsessed with the show’s latter years as I was at the start, but I still enjoyed the ride of it, and the character of Jana still carries the relatability and emotion that is found in all facets of the show. I may see some of the flaws in it now, but seeing all this unfold was unmissable TV for me. I would come home from school on Monday and Tuesday, glue myself to the sofa and completely lose myself in this world for half an hour.  

I have distinct memories of the end of Series 3, where the show pulls a major twist as to who the real villain is, and that revelation was earth-shattering. It was only six days that I had to wait for the next episode, but it felt like six years, which was an indication of how wrapped up I was in the show’s story. The desire to watch an episode of television at the moment of transmission is a desire slowly eking out of all of us, but when you’re in primary school and adult things such as ‘revision’ and ‘university’ are alien concepts to you, it feels like doomsday if you miss anything. 

Wolfblood was a world that you wanted to be a part of. Yes, you had the occasional nutcase wanting to eradicate the Wolfblood species, but you also had the stunning scenery of Northumberland and the excellent folk-heavy soundtrack to pull you in, along with the great scripts and character work. The show’s two theme songs, A Promise That I Keep by Lisa Knapp and Running With The Wolves by Aurora, are all-time classics in my book and bring back a rush of nostalgia every time I hear them. 

It might not be a high-brow drama or a long-running cult classic, but for that giddy little kid that is still inside me somewhere, Wolfblood utterly ruled my life and I’ll always be thankful for the memories.

Alex’s Archive – Raised By Wolves: What Wolfblood Means To Me