LITMIR.BIZ

       LE MANÈGE ENCHANTÉ (1964–1971)

       THE MAGIC ROUNDABOUT (1965–1977)

      ORTF/BBC One (Danot Films/BBC)

      The original cult children’s programme.

      ANIMATION IS THE MOST meticulously planned form of filmmaking in front of the camera. Behind the camera, it can be more chaotic than anything else. Serge Danot was a young technical assistant for French producers Cinéastes Associés, working on stop-motion animation for commercials and television effects under Leeds-born animator Ivor Wood. A keen and quick learner, Danot began regaling Wood with ideas for children’s entertainments he’d come up with. One, based around the slapstick adventures of various people and animals who lived near an enchanted merry-go-round, was deemed strong enough to go into production in 1964.

      Danot and Wood made the first thirteen five-minute films in a small back room in Danot’s suburban Paris flat, which had to be periodically abandoned to allow the lighting equipment to cool off. A deal was made for French state television to broadcast them, due as much to the engaging character design and minimalist white scenery as the overt ‘Frenchness’ of the cast. Each character paid vocal homage to a different French region with the exception of Pollux – an initially incidental long-haired dog who, inspired by Wood, spoke broken French in an English accent.

      Domestic success made the show a candidate for the international market, and the first thirty-nine films were bought by the BBC in 1965. Crucially, the means to translate the original dialogue from the French was not forthcoming, so it fell to Play School presenter Eric Thompson, hired to provide the English narration, to also provide the English translation. Unfortunately he hadn’t a word of French, so he watched the silent episodes reel-by-reel and started scripting from scratch. Without even a character guide to hand, Thompson looked to his family and the pupils of nearby Ardentinny primary school in Strathclyde for personality types.

      Azalea the cow became Ermintrude, Ambrose the snail became Brian, Father Peony became Mr Rusty, and Pollux the dog was rechristened Dougal. Zebulon’s mystical incantation ‘Tournicoti Tounicoton!’ was now Zebedee’s thoroughly agreeable ‘Time for bed!’ Thompson’s contributions are famous for turning the original knockabout cartoon into something subtler, even – in a very broad sense of the word – subversive. This stemmed from an attitude that would logically have debarred him from working on the show. ‘I don’t actually believe children exist,’ he claimed, ‘except as part of the adult imagination. When I started to write, I wrote for people, since I think that’s what children are – people who haven’t lived very long.’142

      A professional children’s writer would have diligently kept esoteric references to Ken Russell and trade unions well out of it. Thompson kept them in, like an inexperienced but eager dad reading a bedtime story and periodically drifting back into the workaday world, using ‘long words, intricate phrases … if I could find a long word where a short one would do, I used it because children want the real thing.’ Occasionally Thompson, by his own estimation, overdid the knowing asides. When Dylan the laid-back rabbit is introduced, Dougal remarks that for a rabbit he doesn’t hop about much. Dylan’s reply: ‘We’re re-thinking the image.’ Thompson confessed, ‘children couldn’t really get hold of an idea like that’.143

      The new narration had the side effect of quietening things down: the adversarial shouts of the French soundtrack were replaced with Thompson’s more modulated table talk. This was easier on parental ears than the standard full-throated cartoon declamation, so child-minding adults were more predisposed to listen, catch Thompson’s politely skewed monologue, and get hooked. Viewing figures leapt towards eight million, an extraordinary figure for an afternoon slot, equally split between adults and kids, united in their fervent love of Dougal. When the BBC moved it from 5.50 p.m. to 4.55 p.m. in 1966, as a spoiler against ITV’s successful Playtime