 |
|
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
| ||||||||
The Magic Roundabout was an animated children's television programme created in France in 1963, and shown in the UK with an English narration from 18 October 1965 to January 1977. One of the animators was the British Ivor Wood, who went on to animate Paddington Bear and Postman Pat. The first BBC broadcasts were stripped across the week which was the first time an entertainment programme had been transmitted in this way. Since BBC1 did not start broadcasting in colour until November 1969, the series was seen only in black and white until then.
The English (BBC) version was especially distinct from the French version in that the narration was entirely new, created by Eric Thompson from just the visuals and not based on the script by Serge Danot that accompanied the original animations.
Additional episodes, not previously translated, were shown in the UK during the 1990s by Channel 4. Since by that time Thompson was no longer alive the job of narrating them in a pastiche of Thompson's style went to Nigel Planer.
Both the French and the English versions had distinctive theme tunes. The French tune was organ and child-adult vocals. The English version, by Alain Legrand, removed the vocals and increased the tempo of the tune while making it sound as if it was played on a fairground organ.
The set was a brightly coloured and stylized park containing the eponymous roundabout (a fairground carousel).
The French version, Le Manège Enchanté, featured Pere Pivoine (the roundabout owner), Pollux (dog), Flappy (rabbit), Margote (young girl), Zebulan (spring thing) and Ambroise (snail). Around 500 episodes were made and broadcast from 1963 until 1971 on ORTF.
The English characters included:
Part of the show's attraction was that it appealed to adults, who enjoyed the world-weary Hancock-style comments made by Dougal, as well as to children. The audience was measured at eight million viewers at its peak.
Danot made a longer film, Pollux Et Le Chat Bleu, in 1972 which was also adapted by Thompson and shown in Britain as Dougal and the Blue Cat. The cat, named Buxton, was working for the Blue Princess who wanted to take over the garden. The Princess was voiced by Fenella Fielding and was the only time that Eric Thompson called in another person to voice a character.
There is speculation about possible interpretations of the show. One theory is that the characters represented French politicans of the time (Dougal being De Gaulle for instance). Another is that each character was addicted to a different type of psychotropic drug as Dylan was named for Bob Dylan. Neither theory is likely to be true. The second theory was denied by Eric Thompson's widow, Phyllida Law.
The programmes were created by stop frame animation, which meant that Dougal was made without legs as it was felt that with legs he would be too difficult to animate, Zebedee was created from a giant pea which was available in the animation studio and was re-painted. The look of these characters was the responsibility of British animator Ivor Wood, who was working at Danot's studio at the time.
In 1975 Jasper Carrott recorded a short, risqué comic monologue, parodying The Magic Roundabout, which was released on a single as the B-side of his comic song "Funky Moped". The record was a hit, but Carrott always claimed people were buying it for the B-side and not for the song, which he soon came to hate. The show's theme music also featured on two minor UK hit singles in 1991, "Summer's Magic" by Mark Summers and "Magic Style" by The Badman.
A new film is currently in production (2004) which will use the french style of each character having its own 'voice'. Voice artists announced so far are:
|
||||
| View Live Article | This article is from Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License | |
||
