Despite being considered a national institution in the United Kingdom, The Magic Roundabout was discovered in France by Doreen Stephens, the head of the BBC’s Family Programs. French animator Serge Danot’s Le Manège Enchanté had been running on French television for a couple of years. Danot built the sets and shot the puppets one frame at a time to create a three-dimensional animation. Eric Thompson, father of actress Emma and a presenter on the BBC preschool program Playschool, was chosen as writer and narrator for the English version. Rather than translating Danot’s script, Thompson chose to rename the charac- ters and write new scripts. First appearing on the BBC in 1965, The Magic Roundabout was shown just before the 5:55 P.M. main early-evening news bulletin on BBC 1, which meant that many adults caught the program while waiting for the news. At the start of a new series in October 1967, Radio Times (the BBC listings magazine) described the series as a “favorite with children from two to ninety-two.”

The first few programs introduced the basic storyline. Mr. Rusty is unhappy because his roundabout (fairground carousel with horses) has fallen into disre- pair, and the children no longer visit. A magical jack- in-the-box, called Zebedee, appears one day and, using his magic, repairs the roundabout. On the sound of the music from Mr. Rusty’s barrel organ, the roundabout turns, and the children return to play. Zebedee offers one of the children a special gift: a visit to a magic garden. The rest of the series follows this child, a young girl named Florence, and her encounters with the odd assortment of characters that inhabit the magic garden. The remaining episodes were short interactions between the characters, the program starting with the roundabout and often ending with Zebedee bounding into the frame, announcing, “Time for bed!”

In addition to Florence, the main characters were Dougal, a long-haired orange dog with a fondness for lumps of sugar; Brian, a yellow snail; Ermintrude, a pink cow with red spots who wore a hat; and Dylan, a floppy-eared rabbit who wore clothes, carried a guitar, and spent most of the time sleeping propped against a tree. There were also two elderly characters, Mr. McHenry, the gardener who rode a tricycle, and the previously mentioned Mr. Rusty. The garden was home to two-dimensional trees and flowers that spun like pinwheels. Aired in black and white, it was not until 1970 that the bright colors of Danot’s designs could be seen in their true splendor on British television.

If the bright designs of the characters and scenery appealed to its younger viewers, then it was Thompson’s commentary, with frequent references to topical issues and personalities, that appealed to the older viewers. One of the most often quoted pieces of dialogue from the series was Dougal’s manifesto when standing before Parliament: “I’m in favor of the four- day week, the 47-minute hour and the 30-second minute. This gives a lot of time for lying about in the sun and eating” (a comment on the British government’s introduction of the three-day week).

As is the case with many cult programs, rumors abounded about subliminal messages in the program. Most of the rumors that surrounded The Magic Round- about centered on drugs; the psychedelic garden was an acid trip, Dougal’s favorite sugar lumps were LSD, and Dylan was in fact named after Bob Dylan. All these ideas were officially dismissed but added to the cult status of the program. The BBC was inundated with complaints in October 1966, when the network moved The Magic Roundabout to the earlier time of 4:55, which meant that fewer working adults would be able to view it. The BBC bowed to public pressure and moved it back to the later slot several weeks later. Even though Danot had stopped production of the series in 1972, The Magic Roundabout remained on the BBC, with reruns, until 1977. (Danot resumed production of the series in 1980 with 55 new episodes.)

Eric Thompson died in 1982, so when Channel 4 purchased rights to the new episodes in 1992, the actor Nigel Planer (best known in the United Kingdom for his role as Neil the hippy in The Young Ones) took over the role of narrator, writing the new scripts along with his brother Roger. Shown as one of Channel 4’s early- morning children’s programs, Planer’s version remained faithful to the earlier version (even carrying the credit line “with grateful acknowledgement to Eric Thompson”). The programs continued to refer to cur