Monkey Dust

Monkey Dust
Monkey Dust DVD cover
Genre	Black comedy
Created by	Harry Thompson and Shaun Pye
Starring	Simon Greenall Sharon Horgan Morwenna Banks Rebecca Front Frances Barber Enn Reitel Kate Robbins Shaun Pye
Country of origin	United Kingdom
No. of series	3
No. of episodes	18
Production
Producer(s)	Talkback Thames
Running time	29 minutes
Release
Original network	BBC Three, repeated on BBC Two
Original release	9 February 2003 – 8 February 2005

Monkey Dust is a British satirical cartoon, notorious for its dark humour and handling of taboo topics such as bestiality, murder, suicide and paedophilia. There were three series broadcast on BBC Three between 2003 and 2005. Following co-creator Harry Thompson's death, no further series were made.

Each episode featured animation by several different companies including Slinky Pictures, Nexus Productions, Sherbet Animation, Caroline Mabey, Picasso Pictures and VooDooDog, but is linked by recurring themes and jokes, and by seamless transitions between sketches. The episodes are untitled but instead are known by the characters introduced or the one-off sketches included. The principal writers and creators of the series were Harry Thompson and Shaun Pye, although other contributors were responsible for a significant proportion of the work; sometimes collaborating with Thompson and/or Pye; sometimes contributing fully formed sketches to the show. A short overview of the main characters, called a nocturne, set in the various characters' bedrooms with no dialogue and a depressing accompanying song, usually precedes the final section.

The animation in each episode is accompanied by contemporary music which helps the transition between scenes. Numerous songs by Goldfrapp, Boards of Canada and Black Box Recorder. The theme music for all three series is by Eels ("That's Not Really Funny" from Souljacker).

The inclusion of music from Goldfrapp during the first series would have pre-dated the commercial release of their debut album, but production on the series took so long that by the time of airing, Goldfrapp were about to release their second album and the songs included in Monkey Dust were fairly well known. Thompson and Pye comment on this in the Series 1 DVD commentary.

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