CLANGERS: The Complete Scripts 1969-1974

The much-loved Clangers, designed as a series for pre-school children, were pink knitted mouse-like creatures who lived on a blue moon and went round solving everyday logistical problems in unpredictable ways. They spoke in their own whistling language, and for the iconic first two series the storyline was narrated in a voice-over by their creator and animator Oliver Postgate. Forty years on there was a third series narrated by Michael Palin, still using the stop-motion animation which was part of the original experience. Palin writes a Foreword to this volume describing how he loved watching the series with his children and pointing out that The Clangers launched at the same time as Monty Python's Flying Circus. The two shows had something in common in their "quirky, subversive, anti-establishment tone". Daniel Postgate's introduction describes the genesis of the show at a time when the moon landings were news and David Bowie released his iconic "Space Oddity". He describes how his father worked with the designer Peter Firmin, scripting in the morning and then heading to a barn where the filming took place in the afternoon. The Clangers was filmed in bright, "boiled-sweet" colour even though less than half the population had colour TV at the time. In this astonishing volume we see for the first time, in facsimiles of the 26 scripts of the two series, that the episodes were scripted in ordinary English dialogue, then translated into the whistling sounds of the Clanger-language and interpreted by the voice-over. All the scripts are here, laboriously typed out on a manual typewriter, accompanied by pages of sketches and notes, from Major Clanger's failed first spaceship and its rescue by two booster rockets, to the musical extravaganza of the final episode. 22 x 19cm, 232pp, facsimiles and colour photos on every page.
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