Today's Shuker In Movieland blog post features another trip across the border from MovieLand into TVLand, but presents less of a review and more of an investigation.
For I am trying to uncover as much information as I can concerning a fantastic, fascinating kids' TV programme that I absolutely adored as a child but of which, tragically, not a single episode is currently known for certain to exist. The progamme in question is Oliver in the Overworld.
Oliver in the Overworld began life as a serial that was included as just a short segment within each of the 13 25-minute episodes of the second series of a British children's TV show entitled Little Big Time, screened in 1970. However, it proved so popular that in the third Little Big Time series, screened in 1971, all 13 25-minute episodes were devoted entirely to a new Oliver in the Overworld serial, with no other content at all. Conversely, it did not feature at all in either the first or the fourth series of Little Big Time, screened in 1968/69 and 1973 respectively. Now, having set the scene, here is what I have discovered about Oliver in the Overworld so far.
Produced by Southern TV, one of the many local ITV stations that existed back in 1968 when Little Big Time began, the latter show was a zany affair starring the madcap and famously bespectacled British pop singer Freddy Garrity – given to high singing notes and even higher leaps into the air when energetically fronting his formerly highly-successful but recently-disbanded Manchester beat/pop band Freddie and the Dreamers.
Freddie's friendly, exuberant personality (he was even affectionately dubbed 'the clown prince of pop' back in the day) made him an ideal choice to present a children's show like Little Big Time, brimming with crazy games, silly songs, all manner of variety acts, slapstick sketches, and much more – including an ongoing weekly segment entitled Oliver in the Overworld. This was a quite weird but also very wonderful fantasy-themed serial that centred upon Freddie as the only human in a bizarre realm of living machines, the Overworld. Freddie was accompanied on his adventures there by his friendly but exceedingly forgetful grandfather clock, named Oliver, played by the Dreamers' former bassist, Peter Birrell (who was often confused with a popular lookalike British inventor/presenter from that same time period named Wilf Lunn).
Reminiscent of other on-screen fantasies that feature a single human amidst a world of strange, surreal characters, such as the various movie versions of The Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland, Oliver in the Overworld was brought vividly to life with studio sets that were very striking and colourful, and the Overworld characters encountered by Freddie and Oliver were even more so. Giving the show extra zest was the fact that it was filmed live in front of an audience made up entirely of children.
By featuring merely as a short segment within each weekly episode of Little Big Time, the plot of the first Oliver in the Overworld serial was less complex and detailed than that of the second serial (which as noted earlier was a full 25-minute episode each week). Basically, Freddie was woken up one night by a highly distressed Oliver, who had lost his memory, and needed to visit the Clockwork King who ruled the Overworld, the hidden land of living machines, in order to obtain a new one. The Overworld is situated on the roof of our world, which is painted blue to disguise it as sky, but when they arrive they find that the Clockwork King has problems of his own. This is due to someone having stolen the royal central heater's matches and the royal metronome's ding, thereby leaving him bereft of both heat and music.
Moreover, after examining Oliver, the king informs him that it's not his memory that is at fault, rather it's the fact that he is missing an undercog, without which his memory cannot function properly. But where can one be found, and who has stolen the royal heater's matches and the royal metronome ding? Once again, an undercog is at the heart of the problem, but not just any undercog – no indeed. In fact, the culprit is none other than THE Undercog, the most villainous villain in the whole of the Overworld, aided and abetted by his two heinous henchmen – Spanner in the Works, and Spoke in the Wheel (Oliver in the Overworld featured some fantastic punning names for its characters!). Somehow, Freddie and Oliver have to right the Undercog's wicked wrongs if they are ever to fix Oliver's memory and restore heat and music to the Clockwork King's palace – but that's not going to be easy…
A host of catchy songs also feature, sung by Freddie and various of the characters, which were written specially for this first Oliver in the Overworld serial by Albert Hammond and Mike Hazlewood (Hazlewood also served as the serial's narrator), and were also sung along to with great gusto by the children in the audience (who had presumably learnt them during rehearsals). Indeed, these proved so popular that they spawned the release of an official Oliver in the Overworld soundtrack LP album containing many of them.
Furthermore, the most famous one, 'Gimme Dat Ding', recalling the tragic tale of the royal metronome's stolen ding, was released in 1970 as a single by British novelty duo The Pipkins (Tony Burroughs and Roger Greenaway), and actually reached #6 in the UK singles chart, and even #9 in the US Billboard Hot 100 chart! (Click here to listen to it on YouTube.)
As noted earlier, due to the great popularity and success of the Oliver in the Overworld serial segments within the second series of Little Big Time, the third series of it, screened the following year, was given over entirely to a new Oliver in the Overworld serial. This featured another set of specially-written songs by Hammond and Hazlewood, and a second LP soundtrack album containing many of them. Although I can remember little of the first Oliver in the Overworld serial and its songs (other than 'Gimme Dat Ding'), I can remember the second one and its songs very well. My three favourite songs from it were (and still are) 'The Little Girl Who Never Cried', 'Don't Underestimate the Undercog', and 'The Song of the Hungry Drains' (we used to sing the Hungry Drains song all the time at school!) – and if you click their titles here, you can listen to them on YouTube. Nowadays both of the Oliver in the Overworld soundtrack LPs are highly collectable and therefore very costly to purchase, which means that I was exceptionally lucky to find – and buy – a near-mint example of the second one at a car-boot sale here in England about 15 years ago for just 50p!
There was also an Oliver in the OverWorld Annual, and no doubt some of these much sought-after books are still out there somewhere too, but I have yet to see even a photograph of one, let alone a copy. Nevertheless, I live in hope, and keep my eyes peeled at car boot sales, charity shops, and bric-a-brac fairs, just in case!
In this second Oliver in the Overworld serial, Freddie and Oliver (Peter Birrell again) return to the magical land of living machines in order to attend its greatest annual celebration, Inspiration Day, only to discover that whereas the formerly villainous Undercog (Graham Haberfield, also playing Jerry Booth in Coronation Street back then) is now a reformed character, the Clockwork King (Philip Ray), his daughter Princess Necessity (Debbie Bowen), and the entire Overworld are imperiled by a dastardly and immensely rich criminal mastermind – the Mighty Dictaphone (David King), assisted by the equally malign Grim Gramophone (Blake Butler). Additional, rare photographs depicting some of these characters can be found here, on the Little Big Time page at Nostalgia Central's website.
Also on the scene are the untrustworthy Belle Telephones (The Satin Bells), an attractive but amoral singing trio who may be easy on the eye and tuneful to the ear but have no scruples whatsoever if the chance to earn some ready cash is readily offered to them. Nor should we forget High Pipe (Gordon Clyde), Chief of the (ever-) Hungry Drains – another formidable adversary definitely not to be underestimated, or overlooked.
Freddie and Oliver, however, aided by the Undercog and also the Deferential Gearbox (another superb punning name!), have no option but to confront all of these fearsome foes and more, because they find themselves plunged headlong into a desperate search for the Clockwork King's stolen Royal Wind Up Key. For without it, he will be unable to wind himself up each morning, and if he can't wind himself up, he can't function as king – indeed, he can’t function at all!
And guess who is responsible for this all-important key having been stolen? Let's just say that if Freddie and Oliver can't track it down and return it to the Clockwork King before Inspiration Day, there will be a new Overworld ruler – the Mighty Dictaphone!
Interestingly, in spring 2017 a UK touring stage version of Oliver in the Overworld was performed by the Krazy Kat Theatre, in which Freddie is a small deaf child who visits the land of living machines with Oliver his grandfather clock, and has all kinds of thrilling adventures there. Created by multi-award-winning artistic director Kinny Gardner, and featuring wonderful puppetry, dancing, and songs, this was the first new stage musical in which sign language was fully integrated (click here to view a short trailer for it on YouTube).
As I'm sure Freddie Garrity would have been very happy to have known had he still been with us (sadly, he passed away in 2006), this magical story from the early 1970s is clearly far from forgotten even today – which is just as well, because…
At this point in one of my Shuker In MovieLand blog posts, I would normally point you in the direction of trailers or clips from the movie or TV show under review that are available to watch on YouTube, but here is the great tragedy enveloping Oliver in the Overworld, as well as Little Big Time in its entirety. As previously mentioned, they were filmed live, and back in those days live shows were often not recorded, meaning that they were not preserved for future viewings. Also back in those days, even many shows that were recorded were subsequently wiped and recorded over with new programmes, because video tapes at that time were extremely expensive, as well as very bulky, making it far more economically sound simply to reuse tapes rather than to keep purchasing new ones, and storing used ones whose contents may never be watched again anyway (or at least that is what TV bosses mistakenly thought back then). And so, for one or both of these reasons, not a single episode of Oliver in the Overworld (or Little Big Time) is known to exist today.
Having said that, a remarkable find was made only a few years ago. If you click here, you can currently view on YouTube a very precious, presently unique 8-minute video recording, posted there on 14 November 2017 by a member of the last iteration of Freddie and the Dreamers, under the YT user name Bubble TV. Its first half consists of a series of brief excerpts from the second Oliver in the Overworld serial, linked together in what may have been an advertising show reel created to sell the show to the USA. And its second half is a section from a TV show in which English presenter Fred Dinenage is chatting to Freddie Garrity about Oliver in the Overworld, which is again interspersed with short clips. Moreover, these even include a brief but moving snippet from the very end of the last segment in the first Oliver in the Overworld serial, in which Freddie is so overcome with emotion while singing the song 'I'll Come Back And See You Again' to the children in the audience that he is unable to continue singing and has to duck out of camera range for a few moments in order to compose himself.
During my researches when preparing this Shuker In MovieLand blog article, I read that someone while watching it on TV at home had apparently recorded the whole of that final episode from the first Oliver in the Overworld serial (and which is apparently where that clip of Freddie singing the serial's closing song originates) – by the simple yet effective expedient of pointing a home cine-camera at their TV screen while the episode played (for the most part, videocassette recorders had yet to appear on the scene back then). Home cine-cameras were very popular gadgets back as far as the early 1970s, so who knows – if one person did that, perhaps others did too. Among collections of old home movies there just may be some footage of favourite TV shows recorded in this same manner, and which might conceivably include Little Big Time and Oliver in the Overworld.
I have also read about someone who used to tape the episodes of the second Oliver in the Overworld serial on audiocassettes, but sadly they were apparently mislaid 30-odd years ago during a house move. Yet if somehow those ostensibly lost cassette recordings, or others like them, have actually been saved or salvaged somewhere, at least the complete soundtracks to those episodes, i.e. including not just the songs (already preserved on the LP albums) but also the full dialogue (currently lost), will have survived.
Consequently, readers, if you still own any home recordings that you may have made of TV programmes dating from the early 1970s, whether they are video or audio, now that you are aware of Oliver in the Overworld and Little Big Time it might well be worth your time checking through them – you may be the proud and very fortunate possessors of immensely significant, archive-worthy footage that could resurrect fascinating TV programmes like these from small-screen oblivion!
And if you do think you have any such items, or any additional information concerning Oliver in the Overworld, please let me know – I'd greatly welcome any details!
To view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film/TV reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.
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