Boing! (Again...)

 

Sixty Years of the Magic Roundabout

An icon of children’s television has just turned 60, for it was in October 1965 when viewers young and old first took a spin on The Magic Roundabout. Created by French advertising executive Serge Danot and animated by his colleague Ivor Wood, Le Manège Enchanté had been a big hit on the ORTF network in 1964, but the BBC initially passed when offered the filmed series. The creators persisted, and following a reshuffle in the BBC children’s department, the series was duly accepted.

In its French incarnation, Le Manège Enchanté was a somewhat frantic five minutes of jabbering characters with eccentric voices. Pollux, a shaggy dog, was a comical English hound whose French was delivered with a very bad accent (anticipating the policeman of ‘Allo ‘Allo…) British viewers, however, would get to see something rather different. The task of providing English narration fell to actor Eric Thompson, who could neither read nor speak French. For the most part, he ignored the original scripts, and made up his own stories based on what he could see on screen. Thompson took the stories at a leisurely pace – his narration style, leaving just the right amount of space between the dialogue, was later perfectly imitated by Jasper Carrott’s memorable 1970s parody: “Hello Dougal… said Florence.”

ORFT had used the series to fill a five-minute gap before their evening news bulletin, and mindful of their success with this piece of innovative scheduling, the BBC did likewise. The corporation had, in fact, been trialling a ‘pre-news five minutes’ slot since September of 1965, filling it with episodes of Hergé’s Adventures of Tintin, prior to which the evening news had generally been preceded by programmes of twenty or twenty-five minutes duration. Tintin lasted just four weeks before his place in the schedule was handed over to the new arrival.

The first series of The Magic Roundabout had been filmed in black and white, and unlike the standalone stories that followed, took the form of a serial. Episode one  sees a magical jack-in-the-box called Zebedee delivered to forlorn Mr. Rusty, and promising that he will bring back the children to ride on his neglected roundabout https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZlhnP8TBCY. Over the coming episodes, a quartet of children appeared, of whom only one, Florence, would go on to be a regular in the series. As yet, there was no sign of Dougal, Brian, Dylan or Ermintrude the cow; but once they made their appearance, the whole style and tone of the series would be transformed.

Thompson based Dougal’s character on the world-weary cynicism of Tony Hancock, rubbing up against the eternally jovial Brian Snail, and began to insert sly references into the dialogue, realising that a substantial adult audience was watching on the quiet. Dougal would occasionally refer to weatherman Bert Foord, whose bulletins invariably followed the daily visits to the Magic Garden. Some of the ‘adult’ references probably went over the heads of even older viewers: ‘I am a camera,’ declares Brian Snail in one episode (a camera tripod having been mounted on his shell), referencing the 1951 play by John Van Druten. It was almost post-modern…

Two Dougals are joined by Dylan, Mr. MacHenry, and Zebedee –
the small plastic figures were given away in packets of Kellogg's Ricicles circa 1969

The knowing tone of the scripts soon gave rise to an urban myth that has persisted to the present day, to the effect that the series was delivering a sly drug culture subtext. Dylan the sleepy, guitar playing rabbit was key to this ‘interpretation’; named after the most famous guitar-wielding folkie on Earth, he gave every impression of being stoned, while Dougal consumed huge quantities of sugar lumps, well known in counter cultural circles as a means to partake of LSD...

Whatever was going on, The Magic Roundabout was an immediate hit on BBC1. Its first series ran until Christmas 1965, and was repeated immediately. Not only was the series itself deemed a success, the BBC realised that the ‘five minutes before the news’ slot in the schedule had great potential. In the collective memory, it seems as if The Magic Roundabout was always on, and always in that same slot, but as we’ll see, this was by no means the case. A new, Hungarian cartoon series, Peter’s Adventures, took its place in March 1966. Totally forgotten today, this was a quirkily experimental cartoon with a wordless soundtrack of music and sound effects that depicted the surreal adventures of a small, round-headed boy, his sister Kati and their pet dachshund. Lasting for less than a month, it was replaced by further adventures of Tintin, which now annexed the pre-news slot for the forseeable future.

On Monday 3 October, The Magic Roundabout returned with a second series, filmed in colour, but broadcast in black and white (British viewers would not see it in colour until 1970). The slow, melancholic theme tune of the first series was given a jaunty makeover this time around, which would linger long in the memory. The first episode was entitled Florence Give Dougal a Shock: but it was viewers who were in for a shock, when, on Monday 17 October, and without any warning, the BBC moved the programme an hour earlier to 4.55, with an episode appropriately titled Dougal Finds Life Dull.

The scheduling reshuffle meant that, for the time being, there was no five minute, pre-news programme – even Junior Points of View had been migrated to the earlier time. Viewers were furious and complained to the BBC. The corporation had seemingly been unaware of the series’ crossover appeal between children and adults, but were quick to respond to the many complaints, and on Monday 28 November, The Magic Roundabout was returned to its beloved spot before the news.

Above (and top): a selection of the Magic Roundabout sweet cigarette cards, circa 1970

By this time, the series wasn’t just a success on television: it was being eagerly taken up by merchandisers, again taking the BBC entirely by surprise. A swift internal memo was circulated listing similar series with the potential for licensed character merchandising (intriguingly, Peter’s Adventures was amongst the titles listed). For Britain’s animators, the success of The Magic Roundabout must have come as a wake-up call. Here was a prime slot in the TV schedules, with the power to reach much wider audiences than were available for the lunchtime placement of Watch With Mother. Even so, it would be a few years before any home-grown productions appeared ahead of the evening news.

For the first six months of 1967, The Magic Roundabout remained unassailable in its prime early evening spot. Through July, August and September, Dougal, Florence and co. took a summer vacation, with the slot filled by the return of Tintin, a repeat run for Peter’s Adventures (never to be seen again), and another French animation, Little Joe in Beesburg, which has also been consigned to obscurity. On Monday 2 October, the same day as the beloved serial Belle and Sebastian made its British television debut, The Magic Roundabout was back. 

Over the coming years, the series maintained its popularity with children and adults alike, but faced increasing competition from other productions aiming for the same pre-news audience. One of the more popular rivals for viewers’ affections arrived in 1968 in the form of Hector’s House, a series of glove-puppet tales featuring the titular hound and his friends Zaza the cat and Kiki the frog.

By the late 60s, Ivor Wood had parted company with Serge Danot, and whilst The Magic Roundabout kept turning into the new decade, Wood returned to his native England, where his FilmFair company would produce series such as The Herbs and Paddington – the latter proving to be one of the last of the ‘classic’ pre-news animations when it debuted in 1976. Uprooted from The Herbs, Parsley the lion was given his own series of pre-news five minute adventures, debuting in 1970. 

One of two Magic Roundabout stories published in 1971

Magic Roundabout merchandise was appearing in earnest by 1967, with some very realistic soft toys of characters like Dougal and Brian Snail being available through toyshops. Dougal and Florence soon found their way onto (and into) packets of Kellogg's Ricicles, where a set of plastic figures was given away during 1969. The promotion was advertised on television using the original puppets, and with narration from Eric Thompson. A picture strip story appeared in the comic Playhour, and the series inevitably found its way into numerous annuals and picture books. Two French novels featuring Dougal were also given Eric Thompson’s customary treatment, although the laconic narrative style was rather less appealing in print than on screen. Merchandising on the series continued well into the 1970s with Corgi toys offering a range of Magic Roundabout vehicles from 1972, beginning with an open top Citroen (naturally!) fitted with plastic figures of Dougal, Brian and Dylan. A whole ‘Magic Roundabout Playground’ would later appear from the same manufacturer, and is now highly collectable.

Corgi toys' Magic Roundabout car, as featured in the company's 1972 catalogue

New episodes of The Magic Roundabout continued to air until 1977, with the series clocking up over 400 different instalments. The BBC showed it in repeats until 1985, by which time the early evening schedule looked very different and the famous ‘pre news five minute’ spot had disappeared forever. For the record, viewers’ last chance to see Dougal, Florence, Dylan and co in their original incarnation came on Christmas Eve, 1985 at 10.25am – although a solitary episode has been shown more recently on BBC4.

Latterly, a collection of episodes, claiming to be previously unseen (they probably weren’t), found their way onto Channel 4, with narration from Nigel Planer. Away from the confines of the small screen, the series had been developed into a feature-length movie, Dougal and the Blue Cat (1970), which presented a very different asethetic from the colourful minimalism of the TV episodes, and has a darker, surreal quality. Much later, a CGI movie revived the format in 2005, and there is talk online (yet no sign so far) of a new reboot for the series. This is all very well, but rather misses the point that it was the asethetic of real world stop-motion animation that gave the original its charm, alongside which CGI, however well meaning and expensively realised, simply looks shiny and devoid of personality.

For creator Serge Danot, The Magic Roundabout was a career highlight he would never equal. A new animated series failed to find favour with viewers in France and was never taken up by the BBC. He died in 1990. For Eric Thompson, whose witty scripts and charming narration accounted for much of the series’ enduring popularity, ‘time for bed’ came in 1982, at the age of just 53.

The Magic Roundabout belongs to an era when television was the all-powerful mass media influencer, capable of transforming a modest, low-key animated film series into a cult phenomenon. Nobody set out to make it that way – it simply happened, by the happy accident of being the right programme, reaching the right audience at the right time. 

In a future post, I’ll look at the whole phenomenon of the BBC's ‘five minutes before the news’ spot in greater detail.