Oliver Postgate

[undyingking]

Just learnt from vicarage that Oliver Postgate has died.

His work will need no introduction to those of you who are Brits of +/- 15 years or so of my age, because it played a large and benevolent part in shaping our childhoods. Noggin the Nog, Ivor the Engine, Bagpuss and the Clangers -- any one of them would have made him and the rest of the Smallfilms team immortal. What's nice about them, looking back, is the slightly sinister / disturbing undertone that each show had, plugging in nicely to the childhood sense of dangerous excitement. From the frankly scary Pogles' Wood, through the grim, depressing Noggin, the isolated nihilism of the Clangers up to the solipsistic Bagpuss, Postgate played on our emotions and developing minds like a master -- avoiding the happy smiley resolutions that most kids' TV clings to, but still managing to come away from each episode with something gained. But of course it's the brilliance of the conception of characters and settings that captured the imagination so vividly in the first place. We won't see his like again, I don't suppose.

Comments

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

On some level I still regard Nogbad as the perfect archetypal embodiment of a villain.

And the twins give me funny looks when I say "The Marvellous, Mechanical, Mouse Organ... Heave!... Heave!... Heave!".

I think the best measure of the awesomeness of Bagpuss is how shocked I was when I discovered only 13 episodes had ever been made. "No indeed," I thought to myself, "there were dozens! Maybe hundreds!". Oddly, when I tried to enumerate them I could only reach 13.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

They each seem to pack quite a lot in!

[ar-gemlad.livejournal.com]

Oh dear. What a sad thing to hear! Now we need a happy song to cheer us all up!

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

I'm sure YouTube will provide...

[mr-malk.livejournal.com]

I logged on this morning wondering how many of my F-List would have beaten me to posting about Oliver Postgate. (Two so far, but I will be doing my own eulogy soon).
I had to respond to yours though, because although I can see where you are coming from with portraying Bagpuss as solipsistic, I think labelling the Clangers as nihilist is a bit much!

BTW: Nogbad was a nickname of mine at school - not because I was a villainous viking with a pointy chin and a bad moustache you understand, just because I pointed out that one of my friends looked like Noggin (which he did), so he reciprocated.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Maybe nihilist was a bit strong. But there does seem to me to be a strong thread of the futility of effort, and the meaninglessness of existence. For me the iconic episode is the one where astronauts arrive, and the Clangers hide from them.

[secondhand-rick.livejournal.com]

We should have a minute's slow, sad whistling as tribute.

What surprised me was that Ivor the Engine was their first work. That probably just reveals my middle-class, BBC-watching roots though.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

I think it was before we were alive that it was on the Other Side. Be interesting to se those eps though.

[kirian.livejournal.com]

The part in each Bagpuss episode when the narrator says "But Emily loved him" always did (and still does) make me cry, even when I was very small. Wow, even just typing it makes me cry.

Until various radio things about him yesterday, I had no idea that the same man had been behind so many of my favourite childhood programmes. What an amazing chap.