William Lucas

The New Adventures of Black Beauty was the title of a television drama series produced in the early 1990s. The show was produced first in New Zealand, then in Australia. The two different productions had different characters and plotlines, un-related except through the horse, Black Beauty.

The first season of the show was produced 1990-1991 by Isambard Productions Ltd in association with The Fremantle Corporation, and Beta Taurus produced the series primarily in New Zealand as a continuation of the 1972-1974 television drama series, The Adventures of Black Beauty. Set 20 years after the events of the earlier series, it featured two of the original characters, Dr James Gordon and Jenny Gordon Denning. The series was originally aired on ITV in the United Kingdom, and Isambard Productions Ltd produced 26 episodes in total. This production was subsequently aired in the US, where it was split into two seasons, aired in a different order, and with two episodes possibly omitted in some markets.

In 1992, The Fremantle Corporation moved production to Australia with what was for all practical purposes an entirely new series with new characters and a plotline unrelated to the previous episodes. The only connection to earlier works is the use of material from the final episode of the 1990-1991 production, reworked and with a voice-over explaining that Beauty had been released into the Australian wild. This was shown at the beginning of the first episode of the new production.