The Clangers returns to the BBC today after an absence of over 40 years – and we’ve been given an exclusive tour around the Altrincham studio that has brought it back to life.
Animation company Factory is based in an inauspicious building on the Altrincham Business Park, but it’s here where one of the most iconic children’s TV shows ever made is being lovingly and painstakingly revived for the kids of 2015. The first new episode airs on CBeebies at 5.30pm tonight.
Step beyond a fairly innocuous looking office door and you enter Planet Clangers, a series of beautifully realised sets amid a stack of start-of-the-art technology and a team of expert animators, many of whom opted for a career in animation having grown up watching the very programme they are now working on.
Below: An animator works on one of the Clangers sets at Factory in Altrincham
One of them, Jo Chalkley, jumped at the chance to work on the new series. “It was one of my favourite programmes back in the 70s, so when the opportunity came up I just couldn’t refuse it,” she said.
“People may be worried that we’ve spoilt it or modernised it too much, but we haven’t, we’ve kept it very close to the original. It’s still got the same heart and it’s very sympathetically done.”
Chalkley said the new series was full of “nice little stories that are a little bit odd and quirky… I always cry when they come on – I can’t believe it looks so lovely”.
Below: Animator Jo Chalkley with some of her beloved Clangers puppets
The original series, which first aired in 1969, was created by Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin, who were also behind other classics such as Bagpuss and The Saga of Noggin the Nog. Firmin, now 86, has been actively involved in the new Clangers series as an executive producer alongside Daniel Postgate, son of the late Oliver. Michael Palin replaces Oliver as narrator.
After two years of painstaking work, Factory has now delivered 26 of the 52 episodes that the BBC commissioned and is currently working on the remaining 26. Another Altrincham company, Mackinnon and Saunders, has made the puppets.
“Everybody has felt the pressure of bringing it back, but I think we’ve succeeded in creating something that could be considered a continuation, and if Oliver were around today he would have wanted it to look like this,” said managing director Phil Chalk.
Below: Factory MD Phil Chalk in his office on the Altrincham Business Park
Talking about the process of making it, Chalk added: “We get the scripts and outlines from a writing team in London, and our directors and the team here will comment on every aspect of the script.
“Then we make all the sets and the props – literally thousands of individual bits of dressing – for 12 different locations.
“We have six animators, and they’re tasked with producing between 11 and 12 seconds per day, so we’re getting just over a minute of raw animated footage out of the studio on any given day.”
Even the Clangers’ instantly recognisable “language” – performed on the swanee whistle – is scripted, he added.
Below: The Clangers’ “language” being recorded for the new series on a swanee whistle
Factory has enjoyed recent primetime success with ITV puppet sketch show Newzoids, and is also behind well-known children’s programmes such as Raa Raa The Noisy Lion, Roary the Racing Car and Strange Hill High.
Altrincham’s place in the animation history books is already assured – back in the late 90s Bob the Builder was born on the very same industrial park where Factory now reside – and the Clangers revival looks set to carve out another chapter.
“It’s the best thing we’ve ever been involved in,” added Chalk. “Now’s the acid test – do the audience like it?”
