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The Magic Roundabout
Le manège enchanté
1964 · TV series · 5 min episodes · 2 seasons
Created by Serge Danot
AnimationActionAdventureComedyFamilyKidsScience FictionFantasy
The Magic Roundabout is a French-British children's television programme created in France in 1963 by Serge Danot, with the help of Ivor Wood and Wood's French wife, Josiane. The series was originally broadcast between 1964 and 1971 on ORTF, originally in black-and-white. Having originally rejected the series as "charming... but difficult to dub into English", the BBC later produced a version of the series using the original stop motion animation footage with new English-language scripts, written and performed by Eric Thompson, which bore little relation to the original storylines. This version, broadcast in 441 five-minute-long episodes from 18 October 1965 to 25 January 1977, was a great success and attained cult status, and when in 1967 it was moved from the slot just before the evening news to an earlier children's viewing time, adult viewers complained to the BBC.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Roundabout_(Swindon)
The Magic Roundabout in Swindon, England, is a ring junction constructed in 1972 consisting of five mini-roundabouts arranged in a circle. Located near the County Ground, home of Swindon Town F.C., its name comes from the popular children's television series The Magic Roundabout. In 2009, it was voted the fourth-scariest junction in Britain.
Is there somewhere to see the original transcript of Magic Roundabout, it would be very interesting to see the differences.
The Water Margin was on when I was a kid, and after watching perhaps the first episode, I missed all the others, as I was sent to evening elocution lessons, together with the son of my parent's close friends. He was Scottish, so in retrospect I can perhaps understand his parents decision, even though I sometimes had difficulty understanding them, lol, and probably vice-versa, our family were very middle-class English, they were IIRC from Glasgow.
But in any case we kids were both absolutely livid at having to miss this essential schoolboy series, and would spend most of the following day trying to catch up with the story via playground gossip. I remember affecting an extremely exaggerated upper-class English accent in the hopes of putting our parents off the whole elocution project, but on the contrary they seemed delighted. lol.
Reminds me of the ‘Magic Roundabout’ which used animations from a French TV show but completely changed the characters, plot and script.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magic_Roundabout
That pretty much goes for any movie or anime, I would say.
One exception would be the English version of the childrens show "Magic Roundabout" which I believe was originally a French political satire. The English version just watched the show and then made up a story to go along with what was happening on screen.
I presume Zebedee was meant to be a caricature of de Gaulle but if I am mistaken I am sure somebody will correct me. :-)