Over the coming weeks, I’ll be turning my attention to some of those television series that are associated in memory with the school summer holidays – and a few others that for me personally belong in the same category. First off, and one of the earliest examples of children’s programming being shown on summer holiday mornings, is the Belgian boy detective Tintin...
During the early 1970s, no school holiday was complete without one of the many Tintin serials being repeated on BBC1. Commencing on Monday 17 July 1972, the channel’s morning schedule included an hour and fifteen minutes of programmes for children. This was an innovation, as the mornings had previously been a dead zone on BBC1, with nothing to see besides the test card. The first day’s summer morning line-up kicked off at 9.45am with an episode of Mary, Mungo and Midge. American period adventure series Casey Jones steamed in at 10am, while the 1963 wildlife series Attenborough and Animals ran from 10.25 to 10.50. Then it was time for The Adventures of Tintin: The Crab With the Golden Claws, with the morning’s programmes rounded off by The Magic Roundabout at 10.55. This set a template that would be followed, with only minor changes, until the end of the school summer holidays.
At this time, I knew Tintin only from the Tele-Hachette/ Belvision cartoon series that had been shown during the 1960s, and knew nothing of the comic albums, a situation that was soon to change. BBC Television had first begun broadcasting Tintin’s adventures back in 1959, with the serial King Ottokar’s Sceptre, commencing on Sunday 12 April. Produced in black and white by Belvision, this eight-part serial was crude compared to later efforts, with only limited animation, and relied heavily on static panels from the original books. The English voices were supplied by Derek Guyler – although it’s hard to imagine him providing a convincing voice for the young Belgian reporter. A further serial, The Broken Ear, was broadcast in 1962, allowing British Tintin fans to experience an adventure that would not be available in book form for another thirteen years. Neither of these two black and white serials was ever repeated.
The same year, 1962, saw the debut of the better remembered cartoon series, produced this time in colour (although it would not be broadcast in colour until 1972). The Crab With the Golden Claws, freely adapted from Hergé’s 1941 comic album, was shown in twelve ten-minute episodes, beginning on Sunday 27 May and running until Sunday 26 August. It received a repeat run the following year, with the episodes this time edited into 20-minute instalments, beginning on Thursday 2 May at 17.30. This time slot, immediately before the evening news, would become the serial’s natural home for the next six years. The repeat run was followed by The Mystery of the Unicorn (AKA The Secret of the Unicorn), beginning on Thursday 30 May, in the same timeslot. The episodes were again of twenty minutes duration.
On Monday 6 April 1964, a new Tintin serial began. Although it would later be shown in five-minute segments, for this first broadcast Objective Moon (adapted from Hergé’s original comic albums Objectif Lune and On a Marché Sur la Lune) was presented as four twenty-five minute episodes. This may well have been the first Tintin serial I ever saw, and was for many years the only one of which I held any recollection. I almost certainly saw the serials that followed it, but Objective Moon, with its science fiction trappings held the most appeal for me.
Next up was Red Rackham’s Treasure, a sequel story to The Mystery of the Unicorn, broadcast in three parts from 24 June 1964. Up next, on 21 and 28 September came the two-part The Black Island, the original album of which was the only one of Tintin’s adventures set in the United Kingdom. The following year would see a brand new edition of the book, Hergé’s UK publishers Methuen having decreed that the 1939 original, with its dated vehicles and settings, needed updating.
1965 saw repeats for Objective Moon (still in its four-part format) and Red Rackham’s Treasure, the latter in the five-minute episodes that would become the norm for all future broadcasts. From 1966, the Radio Times listings become slightly harder to follow, as the publication began spelling the character’s name as if he were a member of International Rescue – ‘Tin Tin’. The Black Island, now in five-minute segments, was repeated commencing 28 March, followed on 19 April by a brand new, 13-part serial, The Calculus Case (adapted from the 1956 album L’Affaire Tournesol).
The Crab With the Golden Claws, now comprised of 17 five-minute instalments, began a repeat run on 12 May, followed by a 22-part version of Objective Moon, commencing 14 June. Tintin was now in the middle of his longest unbroken run on BBC television, with serials lined up all the way through to the autumn: The Secret of the Unicorn (25 July), Red Rackham’s Treasure (10 August) and to end the run, the previously unseen Star of Mystery (14 September).
1967 saw a repeat of this same serial (now billed as Mysterious Star), beginning on Monday 3 July, and followed by another outing for The Calculus Case (20 July). Finally, July 1968 saw a repeat run for Objective Moon, in its last appearance on BBC television. A year later, real men would land on the real moon, rendering Tintin’s exploits somewhat old hat…
I can still remember seeing this final Tintin serial on this, its fourth run. I also remember the laconic advice that one young viewer sent in to Junior Points of View: ‘put Tintin in the bin-bin’. Someone in programme planning must have been taking notes, because the ‘bin-bin’ is where the intrepid boy reporter found himself for the next four years. It was only with the advent of school holiday scheduling that he was granted a reprieve.
Following its 1972 broadcast, The Crab With the Golden Claws received a repeat run during the summer of 1973, then at Easter 1974, The Secret of the Unicorn was dusted off. Red Rackham’s Treasure followed, logically enough, during the summer holiday, and these same two serials were then repeated to the exclusion of all others: Unicorn at Easter 1975, and Rackham during the summer holiday in 1976. By now, the BBC’s prints must have been getting rather worn, and following repeat runs for Unicorn in 1983 and Rackham the following year, Tintin was consigned to the bin-bin for good…
Whilst this was certainly the end for the Belvision cartoon series, Tintin remained a highly popular character, and a brand new cartoon series, animated more realistically in the style of the original comics, appeared in the early 90s, with episodes being broadcast on Channel 4. The BBC’s Gaelic channel, Alba, also showed them (with translated audio) in the early 2020s. The boy reporter's adventures were also adapted as a radio series (1992-93).
The two live action Tintin movies – Tintin and the Golden Fleece and Tintin and the Blue Oranges – were much harder to find on television, and to my knowledge only the former has ever been broadcast in the UK, making its last appearance (in a restored edition) on BBC2 ten years ago. The cartoon feature, Tintin and the Lake of Sharks (1972) was shown twice by the corporation, in 1977 and 1979. There is, of course, the Speilberg movie, about which the less said, the better…
Although I’d seen Tintin during the 1960s, it wasn’t until the summer 1972 repeat of The Crab With the Golden Claws that I began to take a real interest in the character. Coincidence or not, the cartoon albums, previously available only in hardback, began to appear in paperback that same year, and on a trip to Lichfield on Thursday 27 July, I spotted the book version of The Crab With the Golden Claws in WH Smith and had it bought for me, whilst my brother chose The Black Island. By Thursday 10 August, my diary reports that I was already doing Tintin drawings.
Over the coming years, I collected the many Tintin albums, some of which were still only available in hardback and often had to be ordered specially from Hudsons' bookshop in Birmingham. They're still on my shelves more than fifty years later, but arguably none of it might have happened were it not for those summer holiday screenings back in 1972. And although I’d be the first to acknowledge that the Belvision cartoon series was risible in may respects, it had a certain charm, and even today, it’s those voices I hear in my head when I’m reading the originals...
Next time: he's the most tip-top... Top Cat.
No comments:
Post a Comment