The Magic Roundabout

The Magic Roundabout
Format	Children's television series
Created by	Serge Danot
Starring	Eric Thompson (original narrator) Nigel Planer (Channel 4 narrator)
Country of origin	France
No. of episodes	441
Production
Running time	5 minutes
Broadcast
Original channel	BBC (UK) Playhouse Disney Channel (France)
Original run	18 October 1965 – January 1977

The Magic Roundabout (known in the original French as Le Manège enchanté) was a children's television programme created in France in 1963 by Serge Danot. Some five hundred five-minute-long episodes were made and were originally broadcast between 1964 and 1971 on ORTF.

The series also attained great success in the United Kingdom. The English version was narrated by Eric Thompson, the father of actresses Emma Thompson and Sophie Thompson, and was broadcast from 18 October 1965 to January 1977. This version of the show attained cult status, and was watched as much by adults for its dry humour as by the children for whom it was intended.

Characters

Although the characters were common to both versions, they were given different names depending on the language.

The main character was Pollux (Dougal in the English language version) who was a drop-eared variety of the Skye Terrier. In the French version Pollux was an English character who spoke somewhat broken French with an outrageous English accent, as a result of Ivor Wood's role as co-creator. His sweet tooth, shown through his fondness for sugar lumps, was based on a French belief that one of the traits of the English is a liking for sweets.

Other characters include Zebedee (Zébulon), a jack-in-the-box; Brian (Ambroise), a snail; Ermintrude (Azalée), a cow, and Dylan (Flappy) a rabbit, who in the French version was Spanish. There are two notable human characters: Florence (Margote), a young girl; and Mr Rusty (le Père Pivoine), the operator of the roundabout.

The show had a distinctive visual style. The set was a brightly coloured and stylised park containing the eponymous roundabout (a fairground carousel). The programmes were created by stop motion animation, which meant that Dougal was made without legs to make him easier 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 (and who subsequently animated The Herbs, Paddington Bear and Postman Pat).

English-language version

The British (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. A former BBC employee, interviewed on BBC Radio in 2008, maintained that the original contract with the French owners did not include the scripts which accompanied the original animations (contrary to BBC assumptions). The BBC, instead of making a further payment to acquire the scripts, which would have required translation, decided to commission its own version - without access to the original French, the English version therefore bears no resemblance to it.

The first BBC broadcasts were stripped across the week and shown at 5.40pm, just before the early evening news each day on BBC 1. This was the first time an entertainment programme had been transmitted in this way in the UK. The original series, which was a serial, was made in black-and-white. It was made in colour from series 2.

Fifty-two additional episodes, not previously broadcast, were shown in the UK during 1992 by Channel 4. Thompson had died by this time, and the job of narrating them in a pastiche of Thompson's style went to actor Nigel Planer.

The British Dougal was grumpy and loosely based on Tony Hancock. Ermintrude was rather matronly and fond of singing. Dylan was a hippy-like, guitar-playing rabbit, and rather dopey. Florence was portrayed sensibly. Brian was unsophisticated but well-meaning. Zebedee was an almost human creature in a yellow jacket with a spring instead of feet. He frequently went "Boing!" and regularly closed the show with the phrase "Time for bed." In the original French serial he was delivered to Mr.Rusty in a box which he sprang from like a jack-in-the-box, explaining the spring. In the foreword to the recent re-release of the books, Emma Thompson explains that her father had felt that he was most like Brian of all the characters and that Ermintrude was in some respects based upon his wife.

Other characters include Mr MacHenry, an elderly man who rode a tricycle, Mr Rusty, Uncle Hamish and Angus (in "Dougal's Scottish Holiday"), and a talking train known simply as "The Train". Three other children, Paul, Basil and Rosalie, appeared in the original b/w serial and in the credit sequence of the colour episodes, but very rarely in subsequent episodes.

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 measured eight million at its peak.

There are speculations about possible interpretations of the show:

• One theory is that the characters represented French politicians of the time, and that Dougal represented De Gaulle. (In fact when Serge Danot appeared on 'Late Night Line Up' he revealed that he thought the UK version of Pollux had been re-named De Gaulle, mishearing the name Dougal which the UK translators used for him.)
• Another is that each character was addicted to a different type of psychotropic drug, mainly because of the very laid-back rabbit, Dylan, named after Bob Dylan, but also due to the a psychedelic look of the show and the fact that many of the characters chewed on flowers and sugar cubes. Both speculations are, of course, utter nonsense. As Eric Thompson's widow, Phyllida Law, confirms the scripts contain no reference to drugs.

In 1998, Thompson's stories were published as a series of four paperbacks, The Adventures Of Dougal, The Adventures Of Brian, The Adventures Of Dylan and The Adventures Of Ermintrude with forewords by Emma Thompson (Eric's daughter). The paperbacks were a major success for Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.

For years, the series had re-runs on Cartoon Network, and was later moved to its sister channel, Boomerang.

Missing episodes

Of the 441 episodes that were made, 25 are currently missing. Three episodes from series 2 and seven from series 3 were wiped and the tapes reused for reasons of cost.

It is believed that the 25 missing episodes may have been recorded and is hoped one day they may be found.

Other versions

In Italy, part of the series was broadcast in the late 1970s by the RAI state television network. In this version Pollux-Dougal was renamed Bobo and the show stuck with the idea of giving each character his own voice. Bobo was still referred to as English but did not have an accent. The Italian theme for the series became something of a minor hit in children's music.

In Germany and in Austria it was translated to "Das Zauberkarussell", in Austria there was in 1974/75 a special version in "Betthupferl" (the same then the German "Mr. Sandman") called "Cookie and his friends", as Cookie and his friend Apollonius always went through a hole in a tree to join the garden. The name of the magician "Zebedee" in German is "Zebulon", a reference to of one of the twelve tribes of Israel.

In 2007, a new TV version of The Magic Roundabout was created using the CGI characters from the movie. The original characters all returned, along with a few new ones which were created for the film. 52 episodes were planned for this series.

Theme tunes

Both the French and the British versions had distinctive theme tunes. The French tune was quite an upbeat pop tune played on a Hammond organ with 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 were played on a fairground organ.

Film versions

Dougal and the Blue Cat

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 Voice who wanted to take over the garden. The Blue Voice was voiced by Fenella Fielding and was the only time that Eric Thompson called in another person to voice a character. The Blue Cat heard of Dougal's plan and made him face his ultimate weakness by locking him in a room full of sugar.

2005 film

In 2005, a film adaptation (also called The Magic Roundabout) was released. It was made using modern computer animation, and adopted the French approach of each character having its own voice rather than using a narrator. The voices included Tom Baker, Joanna Lumley, Ian McKellen, Kylie Minogue, Robbie Williams and Lee Evans. The 2-Disc Special Edition of the UK DVD of the film features five of the original Magic Roundabout episodes on the second disc. They are all presented in the original black and white with the option of viewing them in English or in their original French language.

In 2006, the film was released in the US as Doogal. This version featured rewritten dialogue and a new storyline made to accommodate pop culture references and flatulence jokes (neither of which were present in the original release). It also added narration by Judi Dench, and the majority of original British voices were replaced by celebrities more familiar to the American public, such as Jon Stewart and Chevy Chase. Only two original voices remained: those of Kylie Minogue and Ian McKellen. Americans panned the movie. It has a 6% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes,^[1] and received an F rating from Entertainment Weekly magazine. As of 16 March 2006, it grossed a total of 7.2 million dollars in the United States, which is considered exceptionally low by CGI animated film standards, as the average domestic gross for a computer animated film is $134,571,721.

Musical spinoffs

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.

Road traffic spinoff

The name "Magic Roundabout" has been applied in the United Kingdom to large road traffic circulation systems with unconventional layout - at Swindon, for example. The popularity of the TV show coincided with the introduction of such schemes and soon became associated with any complex traffic roundabout. The complex in Hertfordshire at Hemel Hempstead, with its large central roundabout surrounded by six smaller ones, has attracted this nickname. ^[2]

Whereas these highway junctions have acquired the nickname "Magic Roundabout" due to their being unusual or complex, in central Cardiff a statue of Paris-born artist Pierre Vivant (1952-), Cardiff's "Magic Roundabout" was erected in 1992, having been commissioned by Cardiff Bay Arts Trust (now known as Safle, since merging with Cywaith Cymru in 2007). It continues to serve as a useful local landmark during a period of considerable change in the area surrounding Cardiff's old docklands. The "Magic Roundabout" nickname is used with a certain amount of affection by still-amused locals.^[3]

Magic Roundabout and the RAF

The RAF's 8 Squadron's Avro Shackleton airborne early warning aircraft were named after characters from The Magic Roundabout and The Herbs:

• WL741: PC Knapweed
• WL745: Sage
• WL754: Paul
• WL756: Mr Rusty
• WL757: Brian
• WL790: Mr McHenry (later renamed Zebedee)
• WL793: Ermintrude
• WL795: Rosalie
• WR960: Dougal (Now in the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester in England)
• WR963: Parsley (later Ermintrude II)
• WR965: Dill (later Rosalie II) (sometimes referred to as Dylan)
  • http://www.clydeshipping.co.uk/aircraft/readmessages.asp?message=795
  • http://8squadron.co.uk/history_1972-1991.php

In popular culture

• Giant versions of Dougal and Zebedee (both are the size of a small house) are both featured in The Goodies episode "The Goodies Rule – O.K.?" Dougal also makes a brief appearance in another Goodies episode, "It Might as Well Be String".
• In Bill Bailey's stand up show Bewilderness he explains how he also found the iconic music from the show sinister, and notes how it goes "on and on, like Dante's seventh circle of Hell". He then proceeds to play the music with the "secret middle section, deemed unsuitable for small children" reincorporated, which details how Zebedee, "Lord of the Woods", is in fact a hideously deformed freak of nature rejected by society and his horrified parents and is now the evil ruler of the Roundabout universe.
• In the Bottom episode "Dough", Eddie forges a 27 pound note, with a pornographic image on it depicting Sylvester Stallone 'fisting' Mr. McHenry.
• In the Spaced episode "Art", when Daisy goes for a job interview at a popular magazine while under the influence of marijuana, she imagines the theme music playing over the interviewer's voice.

References

External links

• Official Homepage/TV Info
• Licensing & Merchandising info
• "Pollux" song