Underplayed Gems

The Magic Roundabout (2007)

The Magic Roundabout poster
Country
United Kingdom, France
Length
2 seasons, 52 episodes
Rated
G
Rating
2.0 of 10 from 2 voters
Elsewhere
IMDb
The 3D catalogue: film cases on wooden shelves, with the cat sitting at the counter next to its greeting.

The catalogue in 3D

The film shelves have a room of their own that you can walk around in. The cat behind the counter is the AI Catbot, and they pick real films from the same catalogue when you tell them what you feel like watching. Nothing is for sale, here or in there. Go in from here and this series is already out on the counter, with more like it waiting on the shelf next to it.

More series like this

How it feels

A group of animal characters have simple fantasy adventures in a magical roundabout garden. The show's gentle stories are told with stop motion animation and a calm narrator.

whimsicalgentleplayfulnostalgicdreamysimplelightheartedcozy

What happens

The Magic Roundabout is an English-language children's programme that ran on BBC Television from 1965 to 1977. It used the footage of the French stop motion animation show Le Manège enchanté but with completely different scripts and characters. The French series, created by Serge Danot with the help of Ivor Wood and Wood's French wife, Josiane, was broadcast from 1964 to 1974 on ORTF (Office de Radiodiffusion Télévision Française). The scripts are simple fantasy stories aimed at pre-school children, with no relation to the real world. The BBC originally rejected translating the series because it was "charming... but difficult to dub into English", but later produced a version of the series using the French footage with new English-language scripts unrelated to the original storylines. This version, written and told by Eric Thompson, was broadcast in 441 five-minute episodes between 18 October 1965 and 25 January 1977. It proved a great success and attained cult status, and when in October 1966 it was moved from the slot just before the evening news to an earlier children's viewing time, adult viewers complained to the BBC. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

More like this

This page is from Underplayed Gems. Not quite it? You can browse by genre, country and year, or take this one into the 3D catalogue and ask the Catbot for something closer.