Bagpuss
Template:Short description Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox television Bagpuss is a British animated children's television series which was made by Peter Firmin and Oliver Postgate through their company Smallfilms. The series of thirteen episodes was first broadcast from 12 February<ref name=T>Template:Cite news</ref> to 7 May 1974. The title character was "a saggy, old cloth cat, baggy, and a bit loose at the seams".<ref name=Smallfilms>Template:Cite web</ref> Although only thirteen episodes were produced and broadcast, the programme remains fondly remembered by Britons,<ref name=BBC>Template:Cite web</ref> and was frequently repeated in the UK until 1986.<ref name=ODNB>Template:Cite ODNB</ref> In early 1999, Bagpuss topped a BBC poll for the UK's favourite children's television programme.
Characters
Bagpuss himself is a stuffed cloth cat, referred to in the intro as "The Most Important, The Most Beautiful, The Most Magical, Saggy Old Cloth Cat in the Whole, Wide World".
The six mice carved on the side of the "mouse organ" (a small mechanical pipe organ that played rolls of music) wake up and scurry around, singing in high-pitched voices. The names of the six mice are: Charlie Mouse, Jenny Mouse, Janey Mouse, Lizzy Mouse, Eddie Mouse and Willy Mouse, although only three of the mice are ever referred to by their name; the remaining three are named only in the books which accompany the series.
A rag doll made of scraps, called Madeleine, sits in a wicker chair. Gabriel the toad, unlike most Smallfilms characters, could move by a special device beneath his can without the use of stop-motion animation.
The wooden woodpecker bookend became the drily academic Professor Yaffle (based on the philosopher Bertrand Russell, whom Postgate had once met).<ref>Channel 4 News, 9 December 2008.</ref>Template:Better source needed
Voices and music
Sandra Kerr and John Faulkner provided the voices of Madeleine and Gabriel respectively and put together and performed all the folk songs. All the other characters' voices, including that of the narrator, were performed by writer Oliver Postgate.
Format
The scene is set at the turn of the 20th century, with Emily Firmin (Peter Firmin's daughter) playing the part of the Victorian child Emily.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> The first antique village vignette is a cropped image of Horrabridge, Devon, taken in 1898, though nothing is known of the other photo of the children with the pram.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The shop window was at the Firmin family home in Blean, Kent.<ref name=BBC/>
Each episode begins in the same way: through a series of sepia photographs, the viewer is told of a little girl named Emily<ref name=BBC/> who owns a shop. She never sells any merchandise, but instead finds lost or broken objects and later displays them in the front window after they have been mended so their owners might come in and reclaim them.
Emily leaves an object in front of her favourite stuffed toy, a large, saggy, pink-and-white striped cloth cat named Bagpuss, and recites the following verse:<ref name=Smallfilms/>
After Emily departs, Bagpuss wakes up. The programme shifts from sepia to colour stop motion film and various toys in the shop come to life.
After being introduced by the narrator, the toys discuss what the new object is; one of them tells a story related to the object (sometimes shown in an animated thought bubble over Bagpuss's head), often with a song, accompanied by Gabriel on the banjo (which often sounded a lot more like a guitar) and then the mice, singing in high-pitched squeaky harmony to the tune of Sumer Is Icumen In as they work, mending the broken object. There is much banter between the characters, with the pompous Yaffle constantly finding fault with the playful mice: his complaint, 'Those mice are never serious!' becomes his main catchphrase. However, peace is always restored by the end of the episode, usually thanks to the timely intervention of Bagpuss, Gabriel or Madeleine. The newly mended object is then placed in the shop window, so that its owner might see it as they pass and come in to collect it. Bagpuss yawns and goes to sleep, and the colour fades to sepia and the other toys freeze in place as the narrator says the following:
Broadcasting
The series was originally broadcast in the United Kingdom, at 1:45 pm, on BBC1. The BBC sold the series to the Dutch broadcaster Nederlandse Christelijke Radio-Vereniging and the series was transmitted in the Netherlands from October 1976. The series was also transmitted in Italy from February 1977.
Episodes
The titles of the episodes each refer in some way to the object Emily found.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Production
The programmes were made using stop-frame animation. Bagpuss is an actual cloth cat, but was not intended to be such an electric pink. In Firmin's words: "It should have been a ginger marmalade cat but the company in Folkestone dyeing the material made a mistake and it turned out pink and cream. It was the best thing that ever happened".<ref> Template:Cite news</ref>
Madeleine the rag doll was made by Firmin's wife, Joan, with an extra long dress to hold their children's nightdresses, but Postgate asked Joan to make a new version as one of the characters.
Gabriel the Toad was the only character in the series who could move freely without the use of stop-frame animation. Scenes featuring him playing the banjo and singing would have taken quite a bit of time if filmed with the stop-frame method, so Peter Firmin created a mechanism that helped him control Gabriel through a hole in his can. The character was based on a real toad that lived in the basement area of the flat that Peter and Joan rented in Twickenham beside the River Thames. Gabriel (named after Walter Gabriel in The Archers, a long-running British radio soap opera) was originally made for Firmin's live ITV programme The Musical Box. Postgate chose him to be one of the characters in Bagpuss and he was made into a new, slightly larger version.
Professor Yaffle was created as the book-end who had access to "facts". The BBC did not like the original character, a man in top hat made from black Irish bog oak, called "Professor Bogwood". They thought he was too frightening and asked for a non-human instead.
Most of the stories and songs used in the series are based on folk songs and fairy tales from around the world.
Legacy
Template:Refimprove section In 1987, the University of Kent at Canterbury awarded honorary degrees to Postgate and Firmin. In his speech, Postgate stated that the degree was really intended for Bagpuss, who was subsequently displayed in academic dress.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
In 1999, Bagpuss came first in a BBC poll selecting the nation's favourite children's programme made and broadcast by that corporation.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> It also came fourth in the Channel 4 poll, The 100 Greatest Kids' TV Shows, broadcast in 2001.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
In 2002 and 2005, a stage show of Bagpuss songs toured the UK folk festivals and theatres with original singers Sandra Kerr and John Faulkner, along with Kerr's daughter Nancy Kerr and her husband, James Fagan.
In June 2002, the charity Hospices of Hope opened the Bagpuss Children's Wing in its hospice in Brașov, Romania. The wing was funded entirely by Postgate from royalties received from the BBC. In April 2012, Marc Jenner from Tunbridge Wells in Kent ran in the Virgin London Marathon dressed in a Template:Convert Bagpuss costume to raise money for the charity, supported by Emily Firmin (seen in the programme's opening titles) and Postgate's family.
Bagpuss inspired the 2003 Radiohead single "There There", which has the subtitle "The Boney King of Nowhere", a song from Bagpuss. The songwriter, Thom Yorke, asked Postgate to create the music video for "There There", but Postgate declined as he was retired.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
In 2009 Coolabi revealed that it had signed an “exclusive new option to develop and produce new content” based on Bagpuss, as they held the merchandising and distribution rights. Daniel Postgate, the son of co-creator Oliver Postgate, said he did not want a “lightweight” remake using CGI animation. He said CGI had “a slightly lurid quality, even at the best of times”.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
Bagpuss appeared on one of the twelve postage stamps issued by Royal Mail in January 2014 to celebrate classic children's programmes.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
Bagpuss was displayed with Rupert Bear in the Rupert Bear Museum in Canterbury, part of the Canterbury Heritage Museum. After its closure at the end of 2017, he and Rupert Bear moved to the Beaney House of Art and Knowledge in Canterbury.
The first episode of the BBC show Man Like Mobeen was called Bagpuss.<ref>Template:Cite episode</ref>
Film adaptation
In September 2025, it was announced that a Bagpuss film was in development with the estates of Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin. It is being made by Threewise Entertainment, with a release in 2027.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
Home media
VHS
<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
| VHS video title | Year of release | Episodes |
|---|---|---|
| Bagpuss | 1 March 1993 | "The Owls of Athens", "Flying", "The Mouse Mill", "The Ballet Shoe", "Uncle Feedle" |
| Bagpuss (Re-Release) | 16 June 1997 | "The Owls of Athens", "Flying", "The Mouse Mill", "The Ballet Shoe", "Uncle Feedle" |
| Bagpuss: The Complete Series | 10 May 1999 | "Ship in a Bottle", "The Owls of Athens", "The Frog Princess", "The Ballet Shoe", "The Hamish", "The Wise Man", "The Elephant", "The Mouse Mill", "The Giant", "The Old Man's Beard", "The Fiddle", "Flying", "Uncle Feedle" (all 13 episodes) |
| Bagpuss: The Ballet Shoe and other stories | 18 April 2001 | "The Ballet Shoe", "Uncle Feedle", "Flying" |
| Bagpuss: The Mouse Mill and other stories | 18 April 2001 | "The Mouse Mill", "The Hamish", "The Wise Man" |
| Bagpuss: Ship in the Bottle and other stories | 21 April 2003 | "Ship in a Bottle", "The Owls of Athens", "The Giant" |
| Bagpuss: Frog Princess and other stories | 21 April 2003 | "The Frog Princess", "The Elephant", "The Old Man's Beard" |
DVD and Blu-ray
The full series was first released on DVD in April 2005. The full series was re-released in 2023 on Blu-ray and DVD to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Bagpuss. This release included "Peter Firmin – At Home with Bagpuss" and "The Story of Smallfilms" as extra features.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
BBC iPlayer
The entire series was released onto the BBC iPlayer for the first time in May 2021.<ref>Template:Cite press release</ref>
Music
A CD of the original songs was released in 1999. The CD was re-released as well as a vinyl LP, again of the original songs from the series, in 2018.
Books
Several books have been released over the years to accompany the series.<ref>
Template:Cite web</ref>
- The Bagpuss Annual (1974)
- The Second Bagpuss Annual (1975)
- Mr Rumbletum's Gumboot (1975)
- The Song of the Pongo (1975)
- Silly Old Uncle Feedle (1975)
- Bagpuss in the Sun (1975)
- Bagpuss on a Rainy Day (1975)
- The New Bagpuss Annual 2001 (2000)
- Little Book Of Bagpuss (2005)
- The Big Book of Bagpuss (2007)
- Happy Birthday Bagpuss! (2014)
References
External links
- 1970s British animated television series
- 1970s British children's television series
- 1970s preschool education television series
- British preschool education television series
- Animated preschool education television series
- 1974 animated television series debuts
- 1974 British television series debuts
- 1974 British television series endings
- BBC children's television shows
- British children's animated comedy television series
- Animated television series about cats
- Television series by Smallfilms
- Animated television series set in shops
- Television series about sentient toys
- British stop-motion animated television series
- Television shows adapted into novels
- British English-language television shows
- BBC animated television series