Doctor Snuggles is an animated television series created by Jeffrey O'Kelly based on original artwork by Nick Price, about a friendly and optimistic inventor named Doctor Snuggles who has unusual adventures with his friends. The show featured fantastical scenarios which usually involved Doctor Snuggles inventing something outlandish such as a robot helper or diamond-making machine, and had a variety of supporting characters who were mostly anthropomorphic animals.
Production
The show was a co-production between British and Dutch producers. The animation was split by two studios: Top Craft in Japan and DePatie-Freleng from The United States with some minor differences in animation. All Topcraft episodes were directed by the prolific Tsuguyuki Kubo, who worked heavily with Rankin/Bass on a strong majority of their features, movies, and syndicated series. English, Dutch, German, Swedish and Spanish language versions exist, among others. In the English-language version the title character was narrated by veteran actor Peter Ustinov, with Olwen Griffiths and John Challis. The show debuted in 1980 and consisted of thirteen half-hour episodes. The show was based on original artwork by British illustrator Nick Price, original scripts and ideas by Jeffrey O'Kelly, and television scripts for each episode by Richard Carpenter and John Halas. Two episodes were written by Douglas Adams and John Lloyd, both dealing with ecological issues. Episode 9 was written by Loek Kessels. In the UK, the show featured as part of the Watch It! strand for children on the ITV network and later got repeated on Channel 4 as well as being broadcast on The Children's Channel on cable and satellite television. In Canada, the series aired on TVO in Ontario and on Knowledge Network in British Columbia. It also aired on the ABC in Australia and ran from 1 March 1982 to 20 September 1991, M-Net and Bop TV in South Africa, RTB in Brunei, RTÉ in the Irish Republic where it began airing in 1989 and was shown a number of times up until 1998, PTV in Pakistan, Nickelodeon and Nick Jr. in the US, TV2 and TV3 in Malaysia, MediaCorp Channel 5 in Singapore and in New Zealand on TV1 and TV2. The Dutchdubbing was directed by Frans Voordrecht, by with voices by Jules Croiset, Trudy Libosan, Dick Scheffer and Rupert van Woerkom. A German dubbed version was also produced, starring Walter Jokisch as Doctor Snuggles, produced by the Bavaria Atelier GmbH, that premiered in June 1981. The Swedish version features John Harryson and the French version Roger Carel as Doctor Snuggles. Also, a comic series was produced, published in Germany and Sweden.
Plot summary
The show followed the adventures of Doctor Snuggles, a kind old gentleman who lives in a comfortable home with his elderly housekeeper, Miss Nettles. Doctor Snuggles spends most of his time inventing, and throughout the series creates a housekeeping robot, a wormmobile, a machine to restore the colours of the rainbow, a gadget to fight depression, a fire-proof lotion and a time machine, amongst other inventions. He travels by means of a talking pogo-stick/umbrella and a spacecraft made of wood called the Dreamy Boom Boom. Doctor Snuggles also has to deal with the malevolent powers of the crazy magician - Professor Emerald, who is his arch enemy.
DVD release
On 4 July 2005, Firefly Entertainment released Doctor Snuggles on DVD in the UK. The four disc box set, entitled Doctor Snuggles - The Complete Collection, features all thirteen episodes of the series.
