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Round the Bend was a British children's television series, which ran for three seasons on Children's ITV, beginning in 1988. It was cancelled, supposedly following complaints from Mary Whitehouse's National Viewers and Listeners Association about the coarseness of the humour and for being politically incorrect. The show was a Hat Trick production for Yorkshire Television.
Created by the team behind Spitting Image, Round the Bend was a parody of Saturday morning magazine shows - with a host providing linking material between cartoons, music videos and news sections; albeit set in a sewer. The title of the show is a reference to a toilet U-bend, with the opening titles beginning with the camera being flushed down a toilet and ending up in a sewer.
Regular cast
- Doc Croc - The show's host and a temperamental, rude, and overbearing crocodile. He ran the operations of the sewer and took command of the the rats who worked (unpaid) for him:
- Jemimah Wellington-Green - The cleverest of the three rats, she was often sarcastic and miserable about the fact that she worked in a sewer with no hope of a boyfriend. She spoke with a posh accent.
- Vaudville" Vince Vermin - A cockney and the resident comic who always tried to see the bright side of every situation. He hosted his own joke segment of the show.
- Luchetti Bruchetti - an Italian rat and the show's resident artist. Not as intelligent as the other rats, and usually the rat that Doc used to take most of his problems out on.
Parodies
Other non-regular cast members were often parodies of real people or existing TV shows, including:
- A music video segment featuring: Michael Jackdung, Kylie Manure and Jason Dungovan - parodies (in name only) of Michael Jackson, Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan. Each was a hand puppet designed to look like a pile of manure, but with a mouth that would sing along to parodied versions of pop songs.
- The news segment: John Potato's Newsround - a parody of John Craven's Newsround, but presented by a potato. The sports section was presented by David Colemole - a glove-puppet of a mole who wore round glasses and had a voice very similar to David Coleman.
- Vegetables - a parody of Neighbours. All the parts were played by vegetables with Australian accents.
- O.A.P. Man and the Pensioners of the Looniverse - an animated cartoon parody of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe.
- Nursery Crimes - a cartoon parody of Jackanory.
- Attack of the Atomic Banana - a B movie/serial parody with a 50ft. banana rampaging through New York City. King Kong made a cameo, and the "banana problem" was solved by a group of teenagers in a style similar to Scooby-Doo. This section was (fictionally) produced by Stubby Broccoli and Samuel J. Greengrocer, a play on the names of Cubby Broccoli and Samuel J. Briskin. These segments were made with stop-motion animation.
- Thunderpants - a parody of ThunderCats.
Other sections
Other sections included:
- The Son of, The Return of, The Revenge of.... The False Teeth From Beyond The Stars. Another B-Movie parody, featuring a character named Roger Prentice, the apprentice Dentist.
- Pzycho the Magnificent - an animated section in which Pzycho would attempt to use magic for his own personal gain, but would get caught by the police every time.
- The Oddbod Family - animated shorts, each week centred around a member of a family who all have abnormal abilities.
- Tommy's Magic Time Trousers - animation about a boy who can travel through time whenever he drops his trousers.
- Cosmic Comprehensive - animation about a school of aliens.
Merchandise
Due to the popularity of the show, a computer game was created for the ZX Spectrum and was later ported to the Atari ST, Amiga and Acorn Archimedes. A one-off magazine special was also published.
See also
- Harpic, a South African toilet cleaner brand, used to have a slogan which read: 'Harpic cleans round the bend'.
- Thunderpants is the name of a 2002 film, which is unrelated to the Round the Bend animation of the same name.
External links
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