HERGÉ’S ADVENTURES OF TINTIN!!!

A few of my Tintin books, some of which (eg. Explorers on the Moon) I've owned since the early 70s.

Anyone of a certain age (and a tediously comic disposition) will, at the mere mention of The Adventures of Tintin, launch into an imitation of the histrionic voice-over that announced every episode of the animated television exploits of the Belgian boy detective. [For the record, the man behind these strident announcements was American actor and voice artist Paul Frees, an occasional collaborator with Hanna Barbera, who makes a rare in camera appearance as a news reporter in George Pal’s War of the Worlds (1953)]

I’m sure I speak for a lot of viewers who saw these broadcasts during the 1960s and 70s, when I admit that, at the time, I had absolutely no idea what or whom Hergé might be. To me, it was a meaningless word tagged onto the narration to give it an extra rhythmical quality. To my brother and myself, it became corrupted into the more feasible enquiry: ‘who’s seen the Adventures of Tintin?’ We knew very well that wasn’t what he said, but it had to mean something. I didn’t even pick up on it when I had my first encounter with a Tintin book, circa 1968, in WH Smiths’ branch on The Parade, Sutton Coldfield. The book was The Castafiore Emerald, newly out in hardback, and the comic story it told was a far cry from Tintin’s usual dramatic exploits. To me, though, the front cover image of Tintin in front of a bank of television monitors belonged to his moon adventure which was currently being repeated on BBC1. Somewhat surprisingly, I didn’t investigate any further. As far as I was concerned, Tintin belonged on television, and at this stage, aged seven, I had little interest in reading his adventures.

‘Put Tintin in the bin-bin!’

So said a memorably laconic correspondent to BBC TV’s Junior Points of View some time in the autumn of 1968. The Objective Moon serial was nearing completion of its fourth broadcast at the time and, despite having seen it all before, I for one did not share the writer’s sour opinion of the be-quiffed Belgian. Indeed, I didn’t even know he was Belgian: all I knew about him was that he’d been to the moon in a grey checkered space rocket (we were watching in black and white).

The BBC had begun screening the Télé Hachette/ Belvision produced Hergé’s Adventures of Tintin on New Years’ Day 1962, commencing with The Broken Ear (an adventure which I’ve never seen in its televised form). It was shown in weekly fifteen-minute instalments on Monday evenings at 17.40. The Crab With the Golden Claws (from 27 May) saw the serial move to Sunday early evenings, with a repeat on Thursdays at 17.30 the following year, followed by another new adventure, The Mystery of the Unicorn, shown in two twenty-minute episodes. These were presumably edited together from shorter segments, as the serial was later broadcast in five-minute chunks, reverting to its more familiar English title The Secret of the Unicorn. Unusually, this first broadcast was not followed by the expected sequel, Red Rackham’s Treasure. Viewers would have to wait until July 1964 to see how the story panned out.

Next up was Objective Moon, commencing from Monday April 6^th, 1964, which, in spite of its title being a literal tranlation of the French album Objectif Lune, comprised both that story and its sequel, On a Marché Sur La Lune (Explorers on the Moon). Compared with the original comic strip volumes, the contents of the first were shoehorned into a single twenty-five minute episode, with the remaining three installments shifting the action to the moon. (The complete adventure was later released on a very rare VHS tape, not to be confused with the 1990s iteration). A repeat broadcast followed in May 1965, and it is these early transmissions which fixed the character of Tintin in my mind.

Other serials shown during this time included The Black Island and The Calculus Case (better known as The Calculus Affair or L’Affaire Tournesol), but it was the moon adventure which made the greatest impression on me, sucker as I was for anything involving a space rocket. By 1966, the format had been altered to five-minute segments, which would be retained for all remaining broadcasts, with episodes stripped throughout the week in the 17.50 slot prior to the evening news. Objective Moon ran in this format for 22 episodes from June 14^th, 1966. (Incidentally, anyone wishing to follow the screening dates on BBC Genome should take note of the fact that, from 1966 onwards, the series is billed as The Adventures of Tin Tin, someone at the Radio Times evidently having been confused by the Thunderbirds character). The next new broadcast was The Star of Mystery (from September 14^th, 1966, adapting L’Étoile Mysterieuse/The Shooting Star), with a repeat broadcast the following year.

After a break of around a year, Objective Moon was run for a fourth time from July 29^th, 1968 – the extent of the repeats perhaps signifying its popularity – and it was during this run that the sniping comment appeared in Junior Points of View’s postbag. JPOV was, in fact, occupying the same pre-news slot as Tintin at this time, on Friday evenings, presided over by he-of-the-smug-demeanour-and-comb-over – ah, would that it were – Robert Robinson. The letter writer must have felt uncommonly pleased with himself, for the BBC took him at his word: following the repeat of Objective Moon, Tintin was indeed consigned to the bin, with no further broadcasts until July 1972, when The Crab With the Golden Claws formed part of the new summer holiday schedule, stripped through the week in a 10.50am timeslot.

It was during this repeat run that I had my first proper encounter with Tintin in his bona fide comic strip incarnation. The books, previously available only in hardback, had just been issued by publishers Methuen in a new softcover series, comprising a selected few of the volumes then available in English translations; and spotting them (again, in a branch of WH Smith), I made the obvious choice by selecting The Crab With the Golden Claws. My brother made the better call with The Black Island: a revamped 1960s edition produced by the Hergé studios at the behest of the UK publishers who felt that the English settings in the earlier edition needed updating.

Reading The Crab With the Golden Claws, I immediately became aware of the huge liberties that had been taken with the text by the Belvision adaptations, and the television adventures which I’d previously enjoyed were instantly rendered risible. From here on in, I would be (and still am) a devotee of the originals, and over the next few years took pains to acquire as many of the books as I could. This was no mean feat, as the hardbacks were rapidly dwindling in number and could not readily be obtained from even a high-end bookseller. I had to resort to ordering certain editions from Hudsons in Birmingham, although the film editions Tintin and the Blue Oranges and Tintin and the Golden Fleece were by this stage unobtainable. Indeed, I have yet to track down copies of either, but consisting as they do of frame blow-ups from two strange live-action feature films, they’re hardly a priority after forty-odd years.

Back on television, The Secret of the Unicorn was repeated at Easter 1974 and again at the same time the following year. Red Rackham’s Treasure ran during the summer holidays in 1976, again on weekday mornings in a 9.45am slot. These broadcasts all retained the five-minute format that had been the norm since 1966.

At Christmas 1977, the feature film Tintin and the Lake of Sharks was given an afternoon screening at 16.30 on 30^th December. I’d owned the album version of this since 1973, and was curious to see how it looked in motion. The animation was very similar to that employed by the TV episodes, unsurprisingly given that the film’s director was Belvision supremo and Hergé collaborator (careful how you use that word) Raymond LeBlanc. One of the two live-action films, Tintin and the Golden Treasure was shown by the BBC in 1978 and again in 1979 and 1980, offering the curious spectacle of actors made up as Captain Haddock and Tintin. The other live-action effort seemingly never made it onto UK television.

Following Red Rackham’s Treasure in 1976, the Belvision series disappeared from the small screen, but was rescued from the ‘binbin’ in 1983 with yet another repeat for the perennially popular The Secret of the Unicorn, again in five-minute episodes. Its sequel was shown once more the following year, but this time it really was the end for the original series, and after twenty one years on air, Hergé’s Adventures of Tintin took its last bow at the BBC on Thursday, 28^th February 1984 at 16.20 (although some of the serials would later air on ITV and Channel 4). A new animated series was to follow in 1991, adapting all of the original texts, with superior cell animation, but the same old tendency to deviate from the plot. Despite being a fan, I never took the trouble to see many of these new films: by this time it was the books or nothing for me.

'Appearances in other media' (as Wikipedia would have it): this panel from Le 

Français d'Aujord' Hui, a school text book from the 1970s, illustrates part of the story L'Anniversaire de Maire-Claude. Note how the cover of Objectif Lune has been subtly altered to avoid copyright infringement. Expect a full blog on La Famille Bertillon plus tard…

So what was it about the Tintin books that I found so appealing? Initially, it was the artwork. I felt I already knew the characters from the TV episodes, and to this day, it’s the Belvision version of the Thompson Twins’ voices that I hear in my head (Paul Frees’ Captain Haddock has proved hard to shake off, too). Comparing the first two volumes that came into our house, I could see at once that huge advances had been made between the publication of The Crab With the Golden Claws (1943 in its French, colour edition) and The Black Island, a comparative newcomer dating back a mere eight years. The realism of the latter was remarkable, with superb renderings of vehicles such as a Triumph Herald convertible and Dr. Müller’s Jaguar Mk X. Stylised though the illustrations may have been, with their distinctive, crisp ‘ligne claire’ look, the effect was that of complete realism within Hergé’s own defined comic strip world. The man was evidently a genius. It was only much later that I learned of his studio methods whereby various collaborators (that word again!) would be co-opted to research and draw vehicles and settings, leaving Hergé himself free to concentrate on the characters. But frankly, given the opportunity and the budget, only a total control freak would fail to see the advantages in such a system, and the results took the Tintin adventures beyond brilliance into the realm of the truly unique.

I even commenced to create my own ‘Adventures of Tintin’ in biro and felt-tip pen; although these endeavours scarcely got beyond the covers. Any Google search will reveal an active cottage industry in the creation of highly convincing fake Tintin covers (one or two of them obscene), although they are of academic interest only, and in this age of photoshop, relatively simple for any half decent illustrator to produce. I wonder how many fans were doing the same thing back in 1974, as I was? I’m sure there must have been others.

I’m not saying I wouldn’t have stumbled across the boy detective and his dog (easily done) at some point – but without the prompt of those rubbery Belvision animations, it might have taken a while longer. Bastardised (or Blistering Barnaclised) they may well have been; but there was enough left of the originals to merit further investigation. And he even went to the moon... what more could anyone want of a comic-strip hero?

One last time, after three... HERGÉ’S ADVENTURES OF TINTIN!!!