Review of Mr Benn: The Complete Series

Introduction

"As If By Magic, The Shopkeeper Appeared"

For people of a certain forty-something age, that phrase brings back memories of wolfing down lunch and watching a rather primitively animated bloke in a bowler hat having the most amazing adventures courtesy of a grotty little costume shop.

The BBC, through production company Zephyr Films, brought author and artist David McKee`s creation Mr Benn to lunchtimes back in 1971. Only thirteen fifteen-minute episodes were shot, but those episodes have seldom been off the screen for long since.

Mr Benn was a very respectable businessman. The sort of chap who read the Times and took the 8.30 to Paddington to work in the City. He wore a pinstripe suit and a bowler hat, and he lived at number 52, Festive Road. Every episode he would set out for a little costume shop nearby, run by a little man in a Fez who looked like cartoonist Bill Tidy. He would pick a costume, take it into the changing room, change into it, then go through the other door of the changing room. But the other door of the changing room didn`t lead into the alley behind the shop. It led to an adventure.

It was a simple format, presented in a very simple, limited-animation style (more rostrum camera than genuine animation) by McKee himself and Ian Lawless, but it was brought to life by the narration of sixties icon Ray Brooks (The Knack, and How To Get It). The stories were told as if reading them from a book and the action on screen followed. They were simple, but sneakily had deeper texts of life lessons for their young viewers. The magic was in the telling which never battered the audience about the head with morals.

As a person of that certain age, I was looking forward to seeing the episodes again, so I was very pleased to find the test disc in the bottom of my regular Reviewer jiffy bag.

I wasn`t disappointed. The moment the familiar music started and Ray Brooks` narration started I was transported back to a simpler time when you could put on a different set of clothes and go through another door into another world.

The thirteen original episodes were: The Red Knight; The Caveman; The Hunter; The Wizard; The Diver; The Cowboy; The Spaceman; The Clown; The Cook; The Zoo-Keeper; The Pirate; The Balloonist and The Magic Carpet. McKee went on to make King Rollo for the BBC which used a very similar style to Mr Benn to tell its stories. In 2004, a new fifteen-minute adventure for Mr Benn was commissioned in the shape of "The Gladiator", which is included on the disc.

Trivia buffs may be interested to know that one of McKee`s Mr Benn stories never made it to the screen - one where he tried on a prison uniform and found himself doing bird with fellow prisoner "Smasher" LaGru, a character who crops up (mysteriously) in "The Gladiator".

Video

The episodes are presented in the original 4:3. Colours are bright and the films are remarkably clean in comparison to some of their contemporaries.

Audio

The episodes shot in the 1970s are in mono, reproduced as Dolby Digital 2.0.

Features

None, not even subtitles.

Conclusion

This release is a total wallow in nostalgia for me, and I suspect a lot of folks who grew up in the 1970s. It`s a no-frills release, with the entire content being the fourteen fifteen-minute shorts themselves, but boy is it worth it. The films haven`t dated a second since they were made, and the new "gladiator" episode (commissioned by Nickelodeon) matches the other episodes made thirty years earlier.