Helen and Shaun

“I’m not nutty, and neither is Shaun,” was Helen Jeffs’s description of herself and her boyfriend, and indeed they aren’t; they’re both incredibly interesting people with an admirable single-mindedness in their dedication to wolves.

The first part of this new two-part documentary on Five was a fascinating insight into the life and work of the so-called ‘wolf man’ Shaun Ellis and his partner Helen Jeffs, but the main focus of the film was Shaun’s remarkable relationship with wolves, several of which he keeps captive in Combe Martin Wildlife Park, Devon. He doesn’t do so because he wants them as pets, he does so because otherwise, they’d be dead.

Shaun has been living in a house directly outside the compound where the wolves are housed for more than seven years and the project in Devon is the culmination of a lifetime spent in the study and care of wild animals of all kinds but he’s worked specifically with wolves since 1990. Before that, he studied the red fox species in the UK, and then coyotes in Canada… Read more & comment »