The Original Paddington Bear

Paddington (BBC), 1976

One of those early evening Kids’ classics you used to see before the grown up TV began with the news.

From a golden era of kids TV the original television series of British animated shorts, based on the Paddington bear books by Michael Bond.

Produced by the BBC this was the first television series based on the popular children’s books.

It was one of the few television programmes to combine a puppet with cartoon  animation – Paddington himself was a puppet, but other characters in the series were depicted as cartoon characters.

The animation gives the series  a very distinctive art style. Paddington himself is a stop-motion animated puppet who moves within a 3-dimensional space and interacts with 2-dimensional animated drawings of the human characters, buildings, etc.  The idea was unusual at the time even today it has a distinct style, but the idea worked.  A different technique was employed for the specials but that’s another post.

Thirty episodes aired in 1976.  A Further series of 25 episodes aired between 1979 and 1980 under the  title The Adventures Of  Paddington.  There were also 3 specials that also aired on the BBC between 1980 and 1986.  In total 59 episodes aired on the BBC.

 

Summary

Based on the books the short 5 minute episodes featured the adventures of Paddington Bear.

Paddington is always polite — addressing people as “Mr”, “Mrs”, and “Miss” and very rarely by first names—and well-meaning, though he inflicts hard stares on those who incur his disapproval.

He has an endless capacity for getting into trouble, but he is known to “try so hard to get things right”.  Adopted by a member of the (human) Brown family and therefore gives his full name as “Paddington Brown”.

Clips

 

 

Narrated By: Michael Hordern

Details

Channel: BBC1
Written By: Michael Bond
Produced By: FilmFair
Originally Transmitted:
5th January – 20th May 1976 (series 1)
22nd October 1979 – 18th April 1980

Where To Watch

Selected episodes available on You Tube