Review: The Clangers
Fabulous Films have knocked it out of the park (and onto the moon) releasing yet another favourite television show from when I was a child. This time unleashing all 26 episodes from Season 1 and 2 of The Clangers, now fully restored and presented from high-definition masters.
Originally broadcast between 1969 and 1972, The Clangers was made by Smallfilms; the company set up by Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin and producing many other childhood classics including Bagpuss, Noggin the Nog and Ivor the Engine.
Clangers communicated through whistling sounds, an effect created using a swanee whistle. Full scripts still had to be written so that it was clear what needed to be conveyed through the whistling. Last year Oliver Postgate’s son Daniel published Clangers: The Complete Scripts 1969 to 1974 which proved the urban myth that Clangers had potty mouths. It was confirmed that when Major Clanger was confronted with a door that wouldn’t open in an early episode, he whistled the words “Sod it, the bloody thing has stuck again.”
The Clangers was revived in 2015 for CBeebies. The new programmes are still made using stop motion animation and are narrated by Michael Palin in the UK and William Shatner in America, though (for me at least) they come nowhere near the magical viewing experience of the original series from my childhood…I still can’t have a bowl of soup without somehow referencing the soup dragon….don’t know what that is? Well buy this great set and you (and your family) will soon find out.
Review by Dave from discs kindly supplied by Fabulous Films.
