The Helpers of Willoughby (1959 TV series)

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The Helpers of Willoughby
Based onThe Helpers of Willoughby
by
  • Peter Christoff
  • David Christoff
Written by
  • Peter Christoff (original)
  • Daniel Fischer
Directed byRichard Maxton
Narrated byJanice Shelley
Theme music composerSydney Davids
Composer(s)Sydney Davids
Country of originGandoor
Original language(s)English
No. of programmes1
No. of episodes4
Production
Running time
  • 25 minutes
Release
Original networkGBN
Original release15 August (1959-08-15) – 5 September 1959 (1959-09-05)
Chronology
Related showsThe Helpers of Willoughby (1986 TV series)

The Helpers of Willoughby is a Gandoorese children's television series. It was adapted from the book series of the same name and aired on GBN for four episodes from August to September 1959.

The series was criticized for its various technical incompetencies and is widely considered one of the worst television series produced by the GBC.

History

The Helpers of Willoughby began as a book series written by Peter Christoff that was first published in 1953. The books, which follow the adventures of a group of anthropomorphized vehicles and their human partners in the fictitious town of Willoughby, were based on stories told by Christoff to entertain his son David in the late 1940s.

In early 1959, the GBC acquired the television rights to the books from Christoff's publisher and commissioned a ten episode series adapting the stories from the first two books as part of GBN's Saturday afternoon children's television block.

The task of adapting the stories for television was handed to Daniel Fischer, who was already a well-established writer for children's television. Fischer found that he often had to expand and freely adapt the original stories in order to fit the 25-minute runtime for the episodes.

The Helpers of Willoughby was to be broadcast live and use a mixture of radio-controlled vehicles and puppets with limited usage of pre-filmed inserts for scenes too difficult to perform live and to cover any scene changes.

The series premiered at 1:15 PM on Saturday 15 August 1959 and soon became a source of criticism and mockery due to its many technical incompetencies. During the premiere episode, a crew member was audibly heard saying 'Fuck, goddammit' after the controller responsible for the police car character Peter overshot a turn and crashed his vehicle into some model trees, knocking them over. The first episode was also criticized for having the edges of the table the set was built on visible in many scenes, low-quality superimposition of rain effects during one part of the episode (making it difficult for viewers to tell what was supposed to be happening during these scenes), and the movement of the vehicles was often jerky due to the primitive and early radio-controlled technology being used.

Besides these technical problems, the premiere episode was also criticized by Peter Christoff, who was critical of how it altered his original story to fit the runtime. He was specifically critical of scenes which introduced characters who had not existed at the time of writing the original story, releasing a statement that said 'Introducing these characters in the premiere episode, when none of them were created when I originally wrote the story, will just lead to problems for the GBC. They will be unable to properly adapt their debut stories as these characters will have already been introduced and established characters.' Regardless of his criticisms, Christoff was also hopeful that the technical problems which plagued the premiere episode would be resolved and the series would improve as time went on.

Despite attempts by the GBC to improve the technical quality of the series, it continued to suffer from technical problems and after the broadcast of the series' fourth episode on 5 September 1959, a continuity announcer informed viewers that the fifth episode would not be airing on 12 September and instead repeats of the science-fiction series The Professor would air in the 1:15 PM Saturday afternoon timeslot.

The series' official cancellation would not come until early November, however, when the GBC and Peter Christoff's publisher came to an agreement that the series should not resume broadcast due to its continued technical issues and fears that the series would tarnish the GBC's reputation for quality children's television programming and lead to lower sales for The Helpers of Willoughby books due to being associated with the poor quality television adaption.

The GBC would retain the television rights for The Helpers of Willoughby until 1969 when they would expire and return to Christoff's publisher.

Episodes

While ten episodes were commissioned and scripted for the series, only four episodes were broadcast before the series was cancelled.

Episode Title Airdate
1 'Peter the Police Car' 15 August 1959
2 'Henry the Fire Engine' 22 August 1959
3 'Mike the Ambulance' 29 August 1959
4 'Peter, Henry, and Mike' 5 September 1959
5 'Peter Catches a Thief' Unaired
6 'Billy the Steam Locomotive' Unaired
7 'Fire at the Old Town Hall' Unaired
8 'Billy's Passenger Train' Unaired
9 'Henry and the Cat' Unaired
10 'Police Car Peter Again' Unaired

Episode Status

As the series was broadcast live, none of the four aired episodes survive in their entirety. Only the pre-filmed inserts for the aired episodes, plus the pre-filmed inserts that would have been used for episode five, survive and are archived in the Gandoorese Television and Film Archives.

These surviving inserts (as well as the scripts for all episodes, including the unproduced ones) were later included as a bonus feature on the DVD release of programme 1 of the later 1986 television adaption in 2004.