The Helpers of Willoughby (1959 TV series)
The Helpers of Willoughby | |
---|---|
Based on | The Helpers of Willoughby by
|
Written by |
|
Directed by | Richard Maxton |
Narrated by | Janice Shelley |
Theme music composer | Sydney Davids |
Composer(s) | Sydney Davids |
Country of origin | Gandoor |
Original language(s) | English |
No. of programmes | 1 |
No. of episodes | 4 |
Production | |
Running time |
|
Release | |
Original network | GBN |
Original release | 15 August | – 5 September 1959
Chronology | |
Related shows | The 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, production unfinished |
6 | 'Billy the Steam Locomotive' | Unproduced, only exists as script |
7 | 'Fire at the Old Town Hall' | Unproduced, only exists as script |
8 | 'Billy's Passenger Train' | Unproduced, only exists as script |
9 | 'Henry and the Cat' | Unproduced, only exists as script |
10 | 'Police Car Peter Again' | Unproduced, only exists as script |
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 five episodes that never began production before the series was cancelled) were later included as a bonus feature on the DVD release of programme 1 of the later 1986 television adaption in 2004.
Future Adaptations
The GBC would later use their ownership of the television rights to The Helpers of Willoughby and have several stories from the books be read as part of the television series The Reading Hour in 1966 and 1967.
The television network Ten would acquire the television rights to The Helpers of Willoughby in 1972, following the expiration of the GBC's rights in 1969, and begin work on an animated adaptation of the books. While a pilot was produced in 1973, the series never aired and was ultimately cancelled in 1975, with Ten voluntarily relinquishing the rights the following year.
Television producer Richard Daniels acquired the television rights to the books in 1982, after discovering the book series the previous year to read to his then-four year old son.
Daniels would begin production on his television adaption in late 1985, with the series being produced by his own production company, Richard Daniels Productions, and GBC Kids, the children's television subsidiary of the GBC. Richard Daniels' version of The Helpers of Willoughby would begin airing in October 1986 on GBN and, while it would later move to Chiddies in 2010, is still in production.