The Magic Roundabout
| The Magic Roundabout | |
|---|---|
| Created by | Serge Danot |
| Starring |
Eric Thompson (Original UK narrator) Jimmy Hibbert (Cartoon Network narrator) Nigel Planer (Channel 4 narrator) |
| Country of origin | France, United Kingdom |
| No. of episodes | 441 |
| Production | |
| Running time | 450 × 5 minutes (1965–2000) 104 × 11 minutes (2007–2010) |
| Production company(s) | Danot Production AB Productions |
| Release | |
| Original network |
ORTF (France, 1964–1971) BBC (UK, 1965–1977) Nickelodeon (USA, on Pinwheel, 1980s) Channel 4 (UK, 1992) Nick Jr. and Nick Jr. 2 (UK, 2007–) BBC Four (UK, 2007) Disney Channel (France, 2008) M6 (FR, 2008) ZDF (Germany, 2008) |
| Original release | 1964 – 1971 |
The Magic Roundabout (known in the original French as Le Manège enchanté) was a French-British children's television programme created in France in 1963 by Serge Danot, with the help of Ivor Wood and Wood's French wife, Josiane. The series was originally broadcast from 1964 to 1971 on ORTF (Office de Radiodiffusion Télévision Française). Having originally rejected the series as "charming... but difficult to dub into English", the BBC later produced a version of the series using the original French-stop motion animation footage with new English-language scripts, written and narrated by Eric Thompson, which bore little relation to the original storylines. This version, broadcast in 441 five-minute-long episodes from 18 October 1965 to 25 January 1977, was a great success and attained cult status, and when in 1967 it was moved from the slot just before the evening news to an earlier children's viewing time, adult viewers complained to the BBC.
Although the characters are common to both versions, they were given different names and personalities depending on the language.
The main character is Dougal (Pollux in the original French-language version) who was a drop-eared variety of the Skye Terrier.
In the French version, Pollux is a British character who speaks somewhat broken French with an outrageous English accent as a result of Ivor Wood's role as co-creator. His sweet tooth, shown through his fondness for sugar lumps, was based on a French belief that one of the traits of the English is a liking for sweets.
Other characters include Zebedee (Zébulon), a jack-in-the-box; Brian (Ambroise), a snail; Ermintrude (Azalée), a cow, and Dylan (named after Bob Dylan) (Flappy) a rabbit, who in the French version was Spanish. There are two notable human characters: Florence (Margote), a young girl; and Mr Rusty (le Père Pivoine), the elderly moustachioed operator of the roundabout (making him the second character to sport primarily a moustache, after Zebedee). Other less well known human characters, only seen on the roundabout itself during the credits, are Basil, Paul and Rosalie. There is also an adult character, old Mr McHenry (Jouvence Pio) the gardener who is seen only a couple of times. He is the only bearded character in the show and, despite his name and appearance, is Irish, not Scottish.
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