THE MAGIC ROUNDABOUT

'''The Magic Roundabout''' (Known in the original French as '''Le Manège enchanté''') was a children's television programme created in France in 1963 by Serge Danot. Some five hundred five-minute-long episodes were made and were originally broadcast between 1964 and 1971 on ORTF.
It was in the United Kingdom that the series became best known. The English version was narrated by Eric Thompson, the father of Emma Thompson, and broadcast from 18 October 1965 to January 1977. This version of the show attained cult status, and was watched as much by adults for its dry humour as by the children for whom it was intended.
The characters were given different names in the different languages. The main character was Dougal or Pollux, (a Maltese dog, albeit of a non-standard colour). Other characters are Zebedee or Zébulon, a jack-in-the-box, Brian or Ambroise (a snail), Ermintrude or Azalée (a cow), Dylan or Flappy (a rabbit, who in the French version was Spanish). There are two notable human characters; Florence or Margote, a young girl, and Mr Rusty or le Père Pivoine, the operator of the roundabout.
The show had a distinctive visual style. The set was a brightly coloured and stylized park containing the eponymous roundabout (a fairground carousel). The programmes were created by stop motion animation, which meant that Dougal was made without legs as it was felt that with them he would be too difficult to animate; Zebedee was created from a giant pea which was available in the animation studio and was re-painted. The look of these characters was the responsibility of British animator Ivor Wood, who was working at Danot's studio at the time (and who subsequently animated ''The Herbs'', ''Paddington Bear'' and ''Postman Pat''). In the French version Pollux had a comical English accent as a result of Wood's role as co-creator.

Contents

English language version

Theme tunes

Film versions

Dougal and The Blue Cat

2005 film

Musical spinoffs

Road traffic spinoff

In popular culture

References

External links

English language version

The British (BBC) version was especially distinct from the French version in that the narration was entirely new, created by Eric Thompson from just the visuals and not based on the script by Serge Danot that accompanied the original animations.
The first BBC broadcasts were stripped across the week (shown at 5.40pm, just before the early evening news each day), which was the first time an entertainment programme had been transmitted in this way in the UK. Since BBC1 did not start broadcasting in colour until November 1969, the series was seen only in black and white in the UK until then.
52 additional episodes, not previously broadcast, were shown in the UK during 1992 by Channel 4. Since by that time Thompson was no longer alive, the job of narrating them in a pastiche of Thompson's style went to Nigel Planer.
The British Dougal was grumpy and loosely based on Tony Hancock. Ermintrude was rather matronly and fond of singing. Dylan was a hippy-like, guitar-playing rabbit, rather dopey. Florence was portrayed sensibly. Brian was unsophisticated but well-meaning. Zebedee was an almost human creature in a soldier's uniform with a spring instead of feet; he frequently went "Boing!" and regularly closed the show with the phrase "Time for bed." In the original French pilot he was seen emerging from a jack-in-the-box, which explains the spring.) In the foreword to the recent re-release of the books Emma Thompson explains that her father had felt that he was most like Brian of all the characters and that Ermintrude was in some respects based upon his wife.
Other characters include Mr MacHenry, Mr Rusty and the train. Three other children, Paul, Basil and Rosalie, appeared in the early episodes and in the credit sequence, but very rarely in subsequent episodes.
Part of the show's attraction was that it appealed to adults, who enjoyed the world-weary Hancock-style comments made by Dougal, as well as to children. The audience measured eight million at its peak.
There is speculation about possible interpretations of the show. One theory is that the characters represented French politicians of the time (Dougal being De Gaulle for instance, although he was named Pollux in the French version). Another is that each character was addicted to a different type of psychotropic drug, mainly because of the very laid-back rabbit, Dylan, named after Bob Dylan, but also because the whole show had a psychedelic look to it, and many of the characters chewed on flowers and sugar cubes. However, Eric Thompson's widow, Phyllida Law, denied any reference to drugs was intended.
In 1998, Thompson's stories were published as a series of four paperbacks, ''The Adventures Of Dougal'', ''The Adventures Of Brian'', ''The Adventures Of Dylan'' and ''The Adventures Of Ermintrude'' with forewords by Emma Thompson (Eric's daughter). The paperbacks were a major success for Bloomsbury Publishing plc.
For years, the series had re-runs on Cartoon Network, and was later moved to its sister channel, Boomerang.

Theme tunes

Both the French and the British versions had distinctive theme tunes. The French tune was quite an upbeat pop tune played on a Hammond organ with child-adult vocals. The English version, by Alain Legrand, removed the vocals and increased the tempo of the tune while making it sound as if it were played on a fairground organ.

Film versions

Dougal and The Blue Cat

Danot made a longer film, ''Pollux et le chat bleu'', in 1972 which was also adapted by Thompson and shown in Britain as ''Dougal and the Blue Cat''. The cat, named ''Buxton'', was working for the Blue Voice who wanted to take over the garden. The Blue Voice was voiced by Fenella Fielding and was the only time that Eric Thompson called in another person to voice a character.
The Blue Cat heard of Dougal's plan and made him face his ultimate weakness, and locked him in a room full of sugar.

2005 film

In 2005, a film adaptation (also called ''The Magic Roundabout'') was released. It was made using modern computer animation, and adopted the French approach of each character having its own voice rather than using a narrator.
In 2006, the film was released in the US as ''Doogal''. Most of the voices from the British version were redubbed using American voice actors, such as Jon Stewart and Chevy Chase. Only two original voices remained- those of Kylie Minogue and Ian McKellen. The US version also featured narration by Judi Dench.
The film flopped in America, although in the UK it is better known.

Musical spinoffs

In 1975 Jasper Carrott recorded a short, risqué comic monologue, parodying ''The Magic Roundabout'', which was released on a single as the B-side of his comic song "Funky Moped". The record was a hit, but Carrott always claimed people were buying it for the B-side and not for the song, which he soon came to hate. The show's theme music also featured on two minor UK hit singles in 1991, "Summer's Magic" by Mark Summers and "Magic Style" by The Badman.

Road traffic spinoff

The name "Magic Roundabout" has been applied in the United Kingdom to large road traffic circulation systems with unconventional layout - at Swindon, for example. The popularity of the TV show coincided with the introduction of such schemes and soon became associated with any complex traffic roundabout. The complex in Hertfordshire at Hemel Hempstead, with its large central roundabout surrounded by six smaller ones, has attracted this nickname.
★ ^[1]

In popular culture

★ Giant versions of Dougal and Zebedee (both are the size of a small house) are both featured in ''The Goodies'' episode "''The Goodies Rule – O.K.?''" Dougal also makes a brief appearance in another Goodies episode, "''It Might as Well Be String''".

★ In Bill Bailey's stand up show ''Bewilderness'' he explains how he also found the iconic music from the show sinister, and notes how it goes "on and on, like Dante's seventh circle of Hell". He then proceeds to play the music with the "secret middle section, deemed unsuitable for small children" reincorporated, which details how Zebedee, "Lord of the Woods", is in fact a hideously deformed freak of nature rejected by society and his horrified parents and is now the evil ruler of the ''Roundabout'' universe.

References

1. History of the roundabout at the Hemel Hempstead Today website of the Hemel Gazette Newspaper . Accessed July 2007.

External links

★ Official Homepage/TV Info