Pat & Mat

Pat & Mat
Pat (left) and Mat (right)
Also known as	'A je to!, Pat a Mat'
Genre	Animated television series
Created by	Lubomír Beneš Vladimír Jiránek
Written by	Lubomír Beneš Vladimír Jiránek Jiří Kubíček Vendulka Čvančarová Marek Beneš others
Directed by	Lubomír Beneš Marek Beneš others
Theme music composer	Petr Skoumal
Composer(s)	Luboš Fišer (ep. 1) Petr Skoumal (ep. 2-91)
Country of origin	Czechoslovakia Czech Republic
No. of episodes	91
Production
Running time	6 - 9 min.
Production company(s)	Krátký Film Praha aiF Studio Patmat film s.r.o. others
Release
Original network	ČST ČT STV
Picture format	4:3 (ep. 1-49, 51-78) 16:9 (ep. 50, 79-91)
Audio format	Mono
Original release	1976 – present
External links
Official website

Pat & Mat (Czech: A je to!, Pat a Mat) is a Czech stop-motion animated series featuring two handymen: Pat and Mat (Czech for "stalemate" and "checkmate", respectively, which ultimately come from Persian terms in chess: pāt (Persian: پت‎‎) and māt (Persian: مت‎‎), the latter word being the root for English checkmate). It was created by Lubomír Beneš and Vladimír Jiránek.

The show features the two characters facing mostly self-made problems, trying to solve them using any possible and impossible tools and construction gadgets. This leads to even more problems and yet, eventually, the two manage to get a working result with a mostly surprising solution.

According to the authors, it is the manual ineptitude that inspires the stories. The humour is not the only feature of the show. Another feature is having an optimistic approach towards life. The two characters always get into problematic situations, but they never give up until they solve the problem in imaginative ways.

The show is also memorable for its soundtrack, composed by Petr Skoumal, of which the main parts consist of the theme song and a harmonica tune.

The two characters first appeared in a 1976 short film entitled Kuťáci (The Tinkers). Later, the characters appeared in more shorts, making their own series on Slovak TV entitled ... A je to! (... And that's it!), where they got their final look. The two handymen got their names Pat and Mat in 1989, and this became the name of the show.

While creating the two characters, the authors had in mind especially entertainment for adults, but the show became popular with all audiences. However, in former Czechoslovakia, the first 29 episodes of the series could have been produced as children's TV programme only, in the short's format of 7–9 minutes.