Oliver Postgate, 1925-2008

It’s probably no exaggeration to say that for a generation, Oliver Postgate’s voice may well have been the first that they came to recognise after those of their immediate family. As creator, writer, narrator and director of some of the best loved and most regularly repeated children’s TV shows of all time – among them Bagpuss, The Clangers, Pogle’s Wood, Noggin The Nog and Ivor The Engine – he became one of the most instantly recognisable figures in television without ever really appearing in person.

Working away in a small home studio fitted out with self-made equipment, Postgate and his longtime collaborator Peter Firmin were at odds with the typical approach to making television at the time, and in many ways were pioneers of independent production; indeed, theirs were among the very first externally made shows to appear on the BBC. Perhaps it was this independence and distance from the trends and pressures of the industry that allowed them to create such believeable and highly personal fantasy worlds, in settings ranging from dense woodland to alien planets, and of course a certain old-fashioned shop.

It wasn’t just the script and the visual style that created these worlds though; Postgate’s laid-back, expressive narration, inspired in no small part by Richard Burton’s seminal reading of Under Milk Wood, did so much to create and evoke atmosphere, from the mythical Norselands through a remote steam-age Welsh railway village to the icy wastes of outer space.

This is hardly surprising as Oliver Postgate was a born storyteller; not just in the medium he chose to work in, but also in his everyday life. So many anecdotes that he related in passing in rare interviews have become common knowledge simply because of the spellbinding way in which he related them, not just well-known incidents like the day that the surface of the Clangers’ planet caught fire, but even those about otherwise long-forgotten efforts such as early Smallfilms production Alexander The Mouse. Broadcast live using magnetically-controlled figures on painted backdrops, this show was prone to interruption when magnets were pointed the wrong way and characters ended up flipped upside down, with no other option than for Postgate to reach into shot and set them the right way up by hand. He concluded that particular anecdote by wryly musing that “…all in all, I’m not so sad that nothing exists of it any more”, though the fact that despite this lack of visual evidence you can pretty much picture how the show must have looked is testament to the unique style of Smallfilms’ productions.

Oliver Postgate’s narration, as well as his writing, direction and everything else, will of course live on, not just in the ever-welcome reappearances of Bagpuss, Noggin, Major Clanger and company, but for a lucky few in hazy memories of long-forgotten shows like Little Laura, The Seal of Neptune and the surreal cult favourite schools’ television show Sam On Boff’s Island.

It seems futile to try and come up with a ‘good’ ending when paying tribute to the man who came up with the spark of genius that was the closing sequence of Bagpuss, so instead here’s a conclusion that this writer came to when writing about Smallfilms for this very site a couple of years back, which seems even more pertinent today:

It was never disclosed whether any of the objects that found themselves in the window of Emily’s shop were ever reunited with their owners, but it is perhaps fitting that Bagpuss itself, once quietly shoved away into the televisual equivalent of a shop full of antiques, should have been rediscovered with such enthusiastic fondness. Oliver Postgate paid perhaps the most fitting tribute when he remarked that, “whenever I see the films again, I feel very happy”. There are a great many others who feel exactly the same way”.

Partly for contractual reasons, and partly because Oliver Postgate considers it below par, the one-off special hasn’t been seen since it was first aired in 1974. It’s being used in the documentary to illustrate a section on the increasing politicisation of children’s television during that decade, but although it will be nice to see some footage, it would be even better if BBC4 could see fit to give the entire show a long-overdue repeat.