Review: Rhubarb…and Custard: The Complete Collection

Bob Godfrey’s wobbly animation and Richard Briers’ voice-over are also seared into peoples memories from a show that first hit the screens here in the UK 50 years ago and is utterly timeless in its entertainment value.

 

At a mere 4 and a half minutes long, each episode flew by as the antics of Roobarb the dog and Custard the cat played out before us in an animation style that I found completely fascinating back in the day.

 

Roobarb is a mangy green mongrel with an overactive imagination who takes centre stage with his hair-brained schemes. Custard is Roobarb’s next door neighbour, a lazy and mischievous bright pink cat, who’s always ready to poke fun at Roobarb’s mishaps! Each fun-packed episode finds Roobarb going about some lunatic mission or other, closely watched by Custard from his spot on the garden fence. There’s always an audience to laugh at him when things go wrong…as they invariably do!

 

This 50th Anniversary Edition set of Roobarb ..and Custard: The Complete Collection includes all 30 episodes of Roobarb from Series 1 fully restored from the original film negatives, and all 39 episodes of the second series from 2005 which saw the return of Roobarb in Roobarb and Custard Too, also narrated by Richard Briers.

The pilot, When Roobarb Made a Spike, where Roobarb recreates a bird’s beak in order to pull worms from the garden was screened as ‘one of the outstanding short films of the year’ at the National Film Theatre in 1973. That same year, it was judged one of the best international animations at the LUCCA9 International Exhibition of Animated Films in Italy. By week three of Roobarb being on air in 1974 it was drawing 7 million viewers a week – both adults and children. The show sold to more than 40 countries.

The original series was animated in a deliberately shaky style known as “boiling” where the frame by frame animation doesn’t align properly creating an energetic feel to the show. This contrasted with other slick cartoons of the 70s.

With regular repeats over the years, Roobarb and Custard were voted ‘Britain’s Best Animated Cartoon Characters’ in 2000, and when creator Grange Calveley made a tribute website in 2002 he was inundated with requests for new episodes bringing about series 2.

Both series were written by Calveley who based Roobarb on his own Welsh Border Collie, also named Roobarb as he had “watered the rhubarb” as soon as he moved in to Calveley’s home in Hertfordshire.

Another fantastic nostalgia hit from Fabulous Films.

Released 19th February.

Review by Dave from discs kindly supplied by Fabulous Films.