Andy Pandy is a British children's television series that premiered on BBC TV in summer 1950. Originally live, a series of 13 filmed programmes was shown in 1970, when a new series was made. A reboot of the show was made in 2001. The show was the basis for a comic strip of the same name in the children's magazines Robin and Pippin.
Video Andy Pandy
Original 1950 version
The original version of Andy Pandy premiered on BBC TV in 1950, on either 11 July or 20 June, as part of the For the Children strand (later Watch with Mother) narrated by Maria Bird. Initially the programmes were transmitted live, but it was realised that if the programmes were filmed, they could be repeated. Twenty-six episodes of fifteen minutes duration were filmed on 16mm, and were produced around 1952; they were repeated continuously until 1969 . In 1970, thirteen new episodes were made in colour with Vera McKechnie as narrator. In one episode Andy Pandy sees how high he can go on a swing, an episode featured in the 1987 compilation by BBC Video. Under the umbrella title Watch With Mother as well as the Andy Pandy episodes, there were also The Woodentops, 'Bill and Ben', all having a similar format-filmed marionettes, there was also an animated drawn character called 'Busy Lizzy' incorporated into the Picture book series. All the filmed black and white 1950s original transmissions were narrated by Maria Bird, who was to become a co-producer, with Freda Lingstrom, who worked for the BBC. Bird was a prolific writer of books for the very young, notably Andy Pandy, but it was for her distinct BBC English" enunciation that she is best remembered.
A marionette who lived in a picnic basket, Andy was later joined by Teddy, a teddy bear, and Looby Loo, a rag doll, who would appear/come to life when Andy and Teddy weren't around. Looby Loo had her own special song "Here we go Looby Loo". All three lived in the same picnic basket. Each episode ended with a variation on the song: "Time to go home, Time to go home, Andy is waving goodbye."
It is claimed that the design for the character was based on Paul Atterbury, the then young son of puppeteer Audrey Atterbury. A comic-strip version was published in Robin.
The production staff for the original series were:
- Producer: Freda Lingstrom.
- Narrator: Maria Bird
- Writer/composer: Freda Lingstrom and Maria Bird.
- Singers: Gladys Whitred, Julia Williams
- Puppeteers: Audrey Atterbury, Molly Gibson, Martin Grainger.
Episode list
The 26 episodes were:
Maps Andy Pandy
1970 series
By 1970, the black and white films were almost worn out, and as BBC1 was by then transmitted in colour, 13 new episodes were produced and shown from 5 January 1970.
The 13 episodes of the 1970 series are:
2001 reboot
Another set of 52 episodes was made in 2001, using the stop-motion technique instead of string puppeteering. The original nursery and garden were expanded to an entire village, with Andy (vocals performed by Maria Darling), Teddy (vocals performed by Jimmy Hibbert) and Looby Loo (vocals performed by Joanna Ruiz) now owning individual houses, and four new characters were introduced into the series: Missy Hissy; a snake, Tiffo; a teal-and-purple dog, Bilbo (vocals performed by David Holt); a sailor, and Orbie (vocals performed by Maria Darling); a yellow-and-blue ball. While the emphasis of the original series was on music and movement, the emphasis of the 2001 series was on making and doing.
Listed are the episodes in each series, along with their songs (if any):
Series 1
Series 2
UK VHS and DVD releases
References
External links
- British Film Institute Screen Online
- IMDB
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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