Michael Palin: ‘The Clangers will be a little oasis of calm’

Reviving classic children’s shows is all the rage at the moment, with Paddington, Thunderbirds, the Teletubbies and the Wombles all given a new lease of life. Next up is The Clangers, the show about pink, knitted, mouse-like whistling aliens created in 1969 by Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin. But fans of the gentle, slightly surreal series can rest assured the Clangers have not been given a CGI makeover or modernised for their new CBeebies series later this month.

As its narrator Michael Palin explains: “I’m very glad that they didn’t make major changes to The Clangers because it’s a lovely formula that works. I think part of what makes it work is that in some ways it’s mundane – they use sort of tin lids and elastic bands and all sorts of things to make stuff and I like that.

“I think that’s encouraging children to think for themselves, not press a button and have it all done for them sort of digitally. There’s definitely an element of the old technology to the Clangers’ planet and the Clangers themselves. That appeals to me greatly.”

“I loved watching The Clangers with our children,” Palin recalls. “It calmed everything down and I think possibly these days when everything is such a rush and there are so many demands on our time, ‘Do this, do that, get that done, know about this, find out about that’. The Clangers will be a little oasis of calm and that’s what’s so appealing.”

Palin adds: “I find the Clangers’ world not only calming but therapeutic. There’s a Zen dimension to it. For anyone who says things are getting on top of them I’d say, ‘Don’t spend thousands on a spa, just spend a weekend on the Blue Planet!’”

The first two series were narrated by Postgate – who died in 2008 – and Palin, who has not voiced a regular children’s TV series before, said it was “an honour” to be asked to take on the role and even his children were impressed. “I decided to do it without a second thought because The Clangers is special, there’s nothing quite like that little world that was created by Postgate and Firmin all those years ago.

“I remember watching with my children and finding it just wonderfully peaceful with a little bit of wicked mischief to it throughout which was a very nice combination. To me it’s one of the great classics, it’s like being asked to be Biggles or something like that. I was honoured to be asked really.”

Jo Chalkley, one of the animators working on the series, came back into stop-frame animation from working on Lego computer games because of her fond memories of The Clangers. She was relieved to find out they are, “not wearing baseball hats and texting. It’s like the original – it’s just lovely.”

Palin says, “the whole idea was to keep it as close to the original in the sense of the design and look of the planet”, with the series filmed in the same 12 movements per second. “They’ve made a new set of puppets that move cleverly [and] are quite complex creatures so you can get more movement out of them. But the sounds they make are the same, the people in their world are pretty much the same.

“The scripts are all freshly written but in the spirit of the old stories. So it’s very much like picking it up where it left off and I quite like that as one of the great things for me about The Clangers is they seem to be completely timeless, they’ll always be there, leading their lives and trying to get by day by day with their little problems that occur. There’s a lovely feeling of permanence that’s rather reassuring really.”

Postgate’s son Dan, who has written some of the scripts, said when co-producers Coolabi and the BBC first talked with his family’s company Smallfilms about reviving The Clangers, “I thought there might be a desire to speed things up and make things a bit more sugary, quick cutting and fast stories”; but he was relieved when they said, “no we don’t want to do that, we want to keep that sort of nice mellow, gentle approach to it.”

“To do the new series it was naturally going to be something unknown, so many more people were involved, but I think it’s come together fantastically well and have been delighted with the way it’s turned out. I think we’ve kept all the ethos and values of the original and added it to it. I couldn’t be more happy really. It’s worked very well.”

Like Aidan Turner when he was chosen to play Poldark, Postgate says he felt a huge responsibility to fans of the original series of The Clangers. And to his father: “I don’t want to be the one where everybody goes, ‘Oh God what has his son done!’”

All the Clangers now have an individual swanee whistle – ranging from a small wooden one for Tiny to a large 1930s Bakelite one for Granny – so children can differentiate between them more. With the help of Firmin, the show’s makers, stop-frame company Factory, and puppet makers Mackinnon and Saunders have also created some new elements, which Firmin had already dreamt up but not had the resources to make before, such as Mother’s garden and Major’s workshop.

As they have been asked to make 52 11-minute episodes, the team have scaled up production with nine sets and around 35 puppets so the six animators can work on episodes in parallel. The attention to detail is extraordinary. Hundreds of tiny working props, ranging from shears to radios have been created. The team even bought up the entire dye batch of a colour of wool called Old Rose to ensure repairs to the puppets during filming and in future would be done in exactly the same colour.

“You’ve got to make sure the puppets are robust and under HD you can see every flaw,” says Factory managing director Phil Chalk.

Six knitters worked full time to make the pink skins that surround the sophisticated, mechanical inner workings of the Clangers, using three kilometres of wool. The skins were based – with a few tweaks – on the original pattern created by Firmin’s wife in the 1960s and which will be available on the CBeebies’ Pinterest page. Although a certain amount of new technology is used, as with the painting out of the little rigs used to hold the Clangers to make them jump, the stars in the background are made in the same way as in the originals – by drilling holes in the back of the set so light shines through.

Familiar characters such as the Soup Dragon and Iron Chicken remain, plus the music trees. Music – done by long-time Monty Python collaborator John du Prez – plays an even bigger part than before, with the whole score pitched in line with the Clangers’ whistles. CBeebies executive producer Jackie Edwards says: “That’s the beautiful thing about it, the programme is so rich because every single element has been thought through. It’s a proper labour of love.”

Dan Maddicott, the series producer for Coolabi who also plays the Clangers’ whistles, adds: “I’ve worked on a lot of programmes and this is really a happy series, everyone working on it almost feels privileged to work on it.” Chalk explains: “A lot of the animators were inspired to get involved in stop-frame animation by The Clangers. So to be part of the re-imagining is something else.” Were they tempted to use CGI? “We would never have got the rights,” says Maddicott. “It took a lot of discussion, not to persuade Peter and Dan but to be clear that we were going to do it properly. They would never have agreed to one mention of CGI.”

Edwards adds, “And we wouldn’t have bought it”.Chalk says: “We have to be mindful of the target audience. This isn’t a vanity project, we’re trying to reintroduce a heritage brand to a CBeebies audience. It’s got to be authentic because that audience have no preconceptions of what The Clangers are or where they live – it’s completely brand new.”

“But with the “heart and tone” of the original, explains Edwards.

In the 1970s The Clangers was not well known outside the UK, mostly because it did not need additional funding. The TV market is very different now and the show has been pre-sold abroad, including funding from NBC company Sprout, to broadcasters including Australia’s ABC network. It can travel easily as the different territories can add their own narrator. William Shatner is doing the US version – an obvious choice given the Star Trek star’s space connection.

Is The Clangers’ comeback part of a rekindled love affair with space, due to recent exploration programmes, or part of a wider trend for nostalgia on-screen?

Palin says space is “always fascinating for children”, particularly now with pictures being sent from other planets, but also it could be just that the series “were well done and they’re much-loved. Around The Clangers’ time was a golden age of children’s television and that’s been revisited possibly by the children who grew up then and remember it fondly and are now in a position to produce them or bring them back.”

They may well have the chance with another, Ivor the Engine, as Postgate reveals he “might be able to so something” with the 50s and 70s series about a Welsh steam locomotive, perhaps as live action, rather than animation. “There are new techniques and ways of doing things that make the possibility there. I think there’s a certain dramatic quality to Ivor the Engine. My dad was a big fan of Dylan Thomas and Under Milk Wood and I’ve got this sort of idea of looking at Wales in a quite mystical sort of way.”

“I think there’s something quite nice that could be looked at and expanded upon with all the eccentric characters involved. But not necessarily for children … maybe something that could be for everybody really. That interests me quite a lot.”

“I was listening to Cerys Matthews signing the other day and I thought she’d be really good as Idris wouldn’t she?”

But what about the urban myth that the original series of The Clangers contained some swearing? Firmin clears that up: “I wish journalists would take time to look at the script which is reproduced in The Art of Smallfilms, page 146. The line that has led to that myth is: ‘Oh, dammit. The B thing’s stuck again!’ There was never another line like that and will never be. And it was whistled!”