Oct 16, 2013

'The Clangers' returns in 2015

The BBC has announced that the much-loved British stop-motion series The Clangers, which first aired in 1969, will return in 2015.The new 52-episode series, presented by entertainment rights company Coolabi, will air on the UK CBeebies in the U.K. and on the U.S. early childhood channel Sprout. Animation will be produced by Factory Transmedia and puppet production by McKinnon and Saunders.

Created by writer/narrator Oliver Postgate and model-maker Peter Firmin, the original series was noted for its charming handmade aesthetic. The pink ratty clanger was clearly knitted, and the extraterrestrial environment was equally handmade. As Oliver Postgate himself joked in his 2005 documentary "Animation Nation":

The beginning was a void, and the void was an 8 x 5 hardboard painted midnight blue. The first day we threw stars in every nook and cranny, looked at it, found it to be awful, and started over again. I wish the Good Lord had given us the opportunity to do the same.

Those who fear a CGI resurrection can sleep easy. Speaking to The Independent, Coolabi CEO Jeremy Banks admitted that the new series is stop-motion. Original co-creator Peter Firmin, 84, will resume his former role as puppet maker (as well as executive producer), and Daniel Postgate, son of the late Oliver, will supervise the series' script.

Postgate and Firmin's series will be revived for the first time since the 1970s; in 2005, Oliver Postgate himself commented on the failure of plans to revive the cutout series "The Story of Noggin the Nog":

[The producers] went around the world They went around to TV stations and tried to get viewing contracts, but in every country they went to, they wanted to modify it to fit the audience that would pay the most money. When they returned, "The Story of Noggin the Nog" was completely changed, the story was entirely replaced by the story of Noggin's son, and there was more violence!

Postgate, however, gave the green light to a stop-motion version of Noggin the Nog by Aardman, but the project was abandoned due to lack of funding. One can only hope that the new Clangers will meet a happier fate.