If you grew up in Australia in the late 90s/early 00s, you probably watched The Saddle Club, a TV series based on the books by the US author Bonnie Bryant. The show was weirdly filmed in Australia and was the direct cause of my youthful obsession with horses.
Skip forward a decade and a bit, and another horsey TV series sparked the rekindling of this obsession. CBC’s Heartland, which launched in 2007 and is now 17 seasons in, is a much-loved family soap out of Canada, based on the books by Lauren Brooke. It centres on Amy Fleming (Amber Marshall), a teenager living in Alberta who follows in the footsteps of her mother as a horse whisperer. Amy takes on troubled horses and uses her intuition to rehabilitate them. Every so often something more extreme happens, in the vein of most soaps – a plane/car/motorcycle crash, fire or shooting, for instance – but it’s mostly just horsey family fun.
