flashback friday - paddington bear

I may have already mentioned our new favourite kids TV channel "Tiddlers TV", well it came up trumps again last week when it started showing episodes of "Paddington Bear"  from the 80's.

This is nothing like the new generation of Paddington Bear - the originals were a strange form of animation.  Paddington himself was a 3D puppet who moves between 2D animated scenes, characters and buildings.

56 episodes of Paddington Bear were broadcast between 1975 and 1979 with 3 specials (Paddington goes to the Movies, Paddington Goes to School and Birthday Bonanza) airing between 1980 and 1986*.

A further 13 episodes were broadcast in 1989, these were entirely animated, no 3D paddington.  Some of these episodes had the same titles are the originals but featured a new character.

The Paddington Bear TV shows were based on the books by Michael Bond and directed by Ivor Wood, in the UK they were shown on BBC.

There is a small recurring cast of characters, these include:




Paddington - A polite bear who is found by the Browns at Paddington station.  He is well-meaning, though always, accidentally, getting into trouble.

Mr. Henry Brown - The hapless but friendly father of the Brown family.

Mrs. Mary Brown: Mr Brown's more serious-minded yet friendly wife.

Jonathan and Judy: The energetic and friendly Brown children.

Mrs. Bird: The Browns' stern but friendly nanny and housekeeper.

Mr. Gruber: The friendly owner of an antique shop on the Portobello Road, with whom Paddington has his elevenses every day.

Mr. Curry: The Browns' mean and bad-tempered next-door neighbour, He is a frequent victim of Paddington's misadventures.

Aunt Lucy: Paddington's aunt from South America. She was his legal guardian up until moving into the Home for Retired Bears.

The newest generation of children will experience Paddington through the new film, due for release in November.  Personally the jury is still out in this one in my house. Having grown up with the originals the film version of Paddington just looks wrong and well... scary.  I hope to be proved wrong as the boys will want to go and watch it.

*all images from the original run.