A TV programme which follows the adventures of animals at Chester Zoo continues to be a huge hit with viewers.

The Secret Life of the Zoo, which is now into its fifth week, is one of Channel 4’s top-rated shows, regularly pulling in viewing figures of 2.5m.

Louise Minchin and Olympic gold medallist Amy Williams were among those who took to Twitter to praise the programme after last night’s episode.

Chester-based BBC Breakfast presenter Louise tweeted to say she was finally catching up with the much talked-about show.

Amy, who won gold at in the skeleton event at the 2010 Winter Olympics, said in her tweet that she had always wanted to work with animals.

In last night’s episode, Boris the chimpanzee took a moorhen hostage and it was up to Niall the veteran keeper – who has a long-term friendly bond with Boris, having known him since the chimp arrived at Chester Zoo in the late 1960s – to save the day. After beckoning Boris over to a door, Boris handed over the moorhen to Niall and was rewarded with some bread.

Elsewhere in the zoo, there were problems with Francois the fussy French crocodile, who didn’t have much of an appetite for British food having got used to a French diet.

There was also a tale of turtle love gone wrong. After an unsuccessful attempt at breeding, on closer inspection it turned out that one of the turtles which had previously been sexed as female was actually a male after all.

Animals aren't the only stars

The programme is also making stars of the zoo’s keepers. In last night’s episode, zookeeper Anne came to the rescue after one of the penguins (Sulawesi) escaped from the nursery pen into the adult pen.

Filmed over 10 months, the show is billed as ‘an animal version of Big Brother’ due to the often-amusing similarities between humans and animals.

The programme is doing a good job of filling the void left by 2014’s popular BBC drama Our Zoo, which told the story of how George Mottershead founded Chester Zoo in 1931.