If you’re old enough to remember when Spit The Dog was the name of a badly-mannered puppet, and not a party game played by Premiership footballers, then here’s some great news for you: the current owners of the Bagpuss rights have announced that the little critter is to return, and haunt forever the dreams of a new generation. Huzzah!
To see the potent effect that Bagpuss had on the minds of millions, check out this true fact: Catherine Zeta-Jones was so entranced as a a child by the adventures of Emily that she took to heart the love that little girl had for her “old, saggy friend. Baggy, and a bit loose at the seams“. Twenty years later, and who should catch Catherine’s eye? Only Michael Douglas. Case proven.
Anyway, the news: he’s coming back! The original show was made by Smallfilms, a TV company created by the legendary Peter Firmin and Oliver Postgate. We can’t wait to find out what the new shows will be like. Will they stay true to the original, stop-motion lowtech approach? Will they spice things up a bit by maybe having a CGI Professor Yaffle? Tell us, The Telegraph, what’s it to be?
“Media Company Coolabi, which bought the rights to Bagpuss for $400,000, said new content was in the pipeline.”
Oh, for f…
‘Media Company’. What the hell was wrong with letting two blokes with beards, pipes and cableknit cardigans sit in a pub to create a charming, whimsical vision of childhood innocence and fantasy? How can that spirit possibly be recaptured by twenty failed advertising executives with black-rimmed glasses brainstorming in a meeting pod to work out how they can shoehorn a can of Pepsi into episode 12?
And this: “Content is in the pieline”. Content? Content? Oh God, they’re going to make Manga Bagpuss, aren’t they? There’ll be a pissing viral video, with Bagpuss lumbering over Tokyo, his baggy arse shooting DeathMegaKillKill lasers at the terrified humans, while Professor Yaffle’s beak fires bolts of electrified knowledge, all set to a doomy soundtrack played on the Marvellous Mechanical Mouse Organ.
Look, we’re rethinking this. It is not good news, it is one of the signs of Cultural End Times. Protect yourself and your family now, and may the voracious BagaBagaYaYa – or whatever the hell they decide to call him – have mercy on your sentimental soul.
Follow hecklerspray on Twitter
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
As long as Emly isn’t bringing nicked iPhones in all the time.
“Yeah, sorry about the blood, Bagpuss. Bitch didn’t want to let go of it.”
The mice will take it and jailbreak it, and hack free calls on O2-2-2.
Let’s give the tykes some hope though. Look at the shite they’ve got now. In The Night Garden can jellify a brain faster than a slaughterhouse bolt-gun.
Magnetite, I like it.
The MMMO being used to distract folk as Emily moves through the gathering crowd – dipping here and there for cash and consumables – while Bagpus sits on his fat, pink arse in a nearby alley, chuckling and counting the Blackberries.
He ain’t right, you know.
I always thought that there was something cultish and Wicker Man about the set up in that shop – Bagpuss as Lord Summerisle, Madeline as the school mistress, Gabriel the Toad as the guitar player in the pub. Notice how the mice sang to the tune ‘Summer Is Y’Cumen In’which features in the film. Now imagine them singing with shiny eyed cultish joy as a police officer is burned alive in an enormous wooden bookend in the shape of a woodpecker.