Several months ago here on Shuker In MovieLand, I blogged about dragons in films, lighting up the big screen with flames, fire, and fear. So today, extending the same courtesy to their small-screen counterparts, I am blogging about dragons on television.
There have been many notable small-screen dragons, but thanks to the charmed tenacity of nostalgia, perhaps those that we most readily recall are ones that featured in shows from our childhood.
One of the legendary names in British children's TV is Oliver Postgate (1925-2008), who created and wrote some of the most beloved shows of all time in this special genre of television – Bagpuss, Clangers, Noggin the Nog, Ivor the Engine, and Pogles' Wood, among others. They were all made by his company Smallfilms (founded with Peter Firman), and screened by the BBC. Some of these featured delightful dragons, remaining cherished childhood memories for generations.
Originally screened from 1969 to 1974 but repeated numerous times thereafter, and with a new series beginning in 2015, Clangers was a stop-motion show of 27 original 10-minute episodes, narrated by Postgate (plus many new ones narrated by Michael Palin from 2015 onwards). They featured a family of small whistling aliens, the clangers, with long snouts and knitted waistcoats, who include Major and Mother Clanger, their children Small and Tiny, plus Granny, and three others. The clangers share a tiny hollow planet with a host of exotic fauna and flora, such as the iron chicken and her iron chick, the froglets, the music trees, and, most notable of all, the soup dragon. It is she who obtains from the planet's volcanic soup wells the delicious blue string pudding and green soup that the clangers adore. It was this character (and her baby dragon) who inspired the name of Scottish alternative rock band The Soup Dragons.
Consisting of 27 ten-minute episodes (six in colour) of limited stop-motion photography and first screened in 1959, 'Noggin the Nog' was a Norse-type saga about a tribe of Northmen, the Nogs, led by King Noggin, and featuring an extensive cast of characters. These include Noggin's villainous uncle Nogbad the Bad, inventor Olaf the Lofty, a giant green bird called Graculus, Arup the great walrus, and an amiable ice dragon known as Groliffe (not to mention a flying machine and a fire machine!). Befriended by Noggin, Groliffe subsequently comes to his aid when he and his friends are in trouble. Noggin the Nog proved so popular that a special touring production for the theatre, entitled Noggin the Nog: The Rings of Nudrug, was staged in the UK during the early 1970s, a performance of which I was delighted to attend, courtesy of a school trip, when it visited the Birmingham Repertory Theatre in January 1972, and I still own the official theatre programme for it today.
Spanning 1959 to 1977 and consisting of 32 10-minute black-and-white episodes and 40 5-minute colour episodes of stop-motion photography, Ivor the Engine was famously set in "the top left-hand corner of Wales". It features a green locomotive called Ivor, his driver (Edwin) Jones the Steam, plus several supporting characters. Notable among them is Idris, a small red heraldic dragon based upon the emblem of Wales, who lives with his wife and two dragon children in an extinct volcano called Smoke Hill, and sings in the local choir.
Another company making British TV shows for children that remain as beloved today as they were when first screened during the 1960s and 1970s was Graham Clutterbuck's FilmFair. His BBC shows included such classics as Hatty Town, The Wombles, and Paddington, plus my all-time favourite show as a young child, The Herbs. Consisting of 13 15-minute episodes created and written by Michael Bond, directed by Ivor Wood, and narrated by Gordon Rollings, it was originally screened in 1968 but has been repeated countless times since then. This stop-motion animated series centres upon a magic herb garden in which all of the herbs are animals or people, such as Parsley the lion, Dill the dog, Sage the owl, Sir Basil and Lady Rosemary, Bayleaf the gardener, Constable Knapweed the policeman, elderly Aunt Mint who loves to knit, Belladonna the Witch, and a friendly lisping dragon called Tarragon who unfortunately manages to set fire to all manner of things, although never intentionally. To enter the magic herb garden, encircled by a high wall, you must stand outside its tall gate and say the magic word "Herbidacious!".
What I have always particularly loved about The Herbs in addition to its sweet, gentle nature, and the fact that it was thanks to this show that I learned and remembered ever afterwards the names of a fair few herbs, is that every character has their very own signature song, which they sometimes sing when they first appear in an episode but whose melody always precedes their arrival, whether they sing the words to it or not. Hence my great disappointment when its spin-off series, The Adventures of Parsley, dispensed entirely with this quaint little tradition. The latter show consisted of 32 five-minute episodes, was originally screened during 1970-1971, and focused predominantly upon the characters Parsley and Dill.
A dragon called Dennis who combined the best of both geographical types appeared in James the Cat – a cartoon series of 52 5-minute episodes screened by the BBC from 1984 to 1992. One of many animal friends of the show's title character, Dennis is a pink Chinese dragon but breathes fire and speaks with a Welsh accent!
A happiness-bringing luck dragon long before Falkor debuted in the Michael Ende novel The Neverending Story (1983) and starred in the subsequent movies inspired by it, Chorlton was the friendly but somewhat slow-witted star of an enchanting British TV series entitled Chorlton and the Wheelies, directed by Chris Taylor and originally screened on ITV from 1976 to 1979. Created by Brian Cosgrove and Mark Hall, in the very first of its 40 stop-motion animated episodes Chorlton hatches from an egg and then arrives in Wheelie World. This is a strange land populated mostly by Wheelies – creatures that have wheels instead of legs, but which are burdened with sadness conjured up by a wicked witch called Fenella...until Chorlton's happiness soon dispels the gloom. In subsequent episodes, Fenella puts into practice all manner of evil schemes to rid Wheelie World of Chorlton, or cause problems for him, but he and his Wheelie friends invariably manage to foil them.
One of the most popular series from the golden age of children's TV in the USA was H.R. Pufnstuf, a live-action TV show created by Sid and Marty Krofft, featuring life-sized puppets whose 17 25-minute episodes were first screened from September 1969 to September 1971. H.R. Pufnstuf is not only a big yellow bipedal dragon but also a mayor – of a magical isle called Living Island. Here everything is alive, even the houses, and is where an 11-year-old boy called Jimmy (played by Jack Wild, the artful dodger in the 1968 film musical Oliver!) and his talking flute Freddy are taken to in a mysterious boat. The series' basic scenario is similar to that of Chorlton and the Wheelies, in that the bane of Living Island is a troublesome witch, called Witchiepoo here, but her evil plans are always thwarted by the dragon, Jimmy, and their many friends there.
Originally aired in Canada and the USA from 1993 to 1997, and running to five seasons, collectively containing 65 30-minute episodes, The Adventures of Dudley the Dragon was a live-action show in which a full-costumed actor played Dudley. Befriended by two children after waking up from centuries of hibernation, Dudley finds out what the modern-day world is like, with particular emphasis upon environmental issues.
Other popular children's TV shows featuring dragons included Wacky Races, My Little Pony, The Smurfs, Pocket Dragon Adventures, Eureeka's Castle, Digimon, and, for older children and teenagers, Power Rangers, Dungeons and Dragons, and several Manga series. Moreover, countless TV cartoons have featured dragons as one-off foes or comic relief characters.
One of the earliest but most cherished television shows to include a dragon character was Kukla, Fran and Ollie. Created by puppeteer Burr Tillstrom, directed by Lewis Gomavitz, and airing on American TV from 1947 to 1957, this puppet series was intended for children but proved more popular among adults, due to its being entirely ad-libbed. It starred comedienne Fran Allison alongside a small humanoid puppet named Kukla, plus Ollie, or, to give him his full name, Oliver J. Dragon – a one-toothed dragon puppet with a very roguish persona.
Genuine adult programmes that contained dragons in their dramatis personae have been somewhat few and far between, but the following three are among the best known examples, although very different indeed from one another.
The Munsters was a very popular American sitcom of the mid-1960s, famous for its storyline of a family whose members are all bona fide monsters – a Frankensteinian head of the household, his vampire wife, another vampire as Grandpa, their young werewolf son, and – horror of horrors – a totally normal daughter! (The show's running joke was that she was the freakish member of the family!) Among their equally bizarre pets was a dragon called Spot.
Merlin was a prime-time British fantasy show set in the Arthurian age, but at a time when the magician Merlin was still a youth and his equally young friend was the headstrong and somewhat arrogant Prince (later King) Arthur. During the series, Merlin (played by Colin Morgan) learns a great deal of sorcery from Kilgharrah, the Great Dragon (voiced by John Hurt). He was an original character created specially for this show, who acts as mentor, protector, and advisor to the young wizard, nurturing and honing his developing magical skills. A deadly cockatrice also appears in one episode. The first series was screened by the BBC in 2008, and four more were subsequently produced and broadcast; the last episode of the final, fifth series was broadcast in two parts on Christmas Eve 2012.
Dominating the past decade, however, especially as far as winning multitudes of awards is concerned, was the American blockbuster fantasy TV show Game of Thrones, which prominently featured fire-breathing dragons (albeit not of the classical dragon version, i.e. two-winged, four-legged, but of the two-winged, two-legged wyvern version instead). They debuted in the dramatic climax of Season 1 and continued to appear thereafter right through to the end of the eighth, final season. Until recently, these mighty conflagrating reptiles were thought to have become extinct more than 150 years ago in the land of Westeros, but when Daenerys Targaryen walked into the flaming funeral pyre of her deceased husband while carrying three supposedly long-dead dragon eggs, not only did she miraculously survive unscathed but the eggs hatched, yielding a trio of very much alive baby dragons that would subsequently grow into three full-sized, fire-belching specimens fiercely loyal to her.
Although Westeros dragons cannot be tamed, they can be trained and mastered, and have been utilised and sometimes even ridden by humans in battle, of which there have been an inordinate number in and around Westeros down through the ages. The show was based upon the bestselling series of novels A Song of Ice and Fire, written by George R.R. Martin, and the first novel shares the TV show's title.
I now await with great anticipation the diversity of dragons that will undoubtedly arise to enthral and terrify TV viewers young and old during this present third decade of the 21st Century!
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This Shuker In MovieLand blog article is an expanded, updated excerpt from my book Dragons In Zoology, Cryptozoology, and Culture.
The 'dragons'in Game of Thrones are technically wyverns, they only have two legs and two wings, using the wings to help them support themselves upon the ground. Kilgharrah in Merlin is a true dragon with four legs and two wings and looks much more impressive. True dragons and wyverns are to be found in the long running US tv show Once Upon a Time as well.
ReplyDeleteYes indeed, this is true. I think wyverns are popular choices for TV and movie appearances (as in the two Tolkien movie trilogies too, for instance), because they are easier to create and move realistically via CGI techniques than are classical dragons with four limbs plus two wings. I need to watch Once Upon A Time as I've heard a lot about it but have never seen an episode of it so far.
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