| rdfs:comment | - Bagpuss is a 1974 UK children's BBC television series, made by Peter Firmin and Oliver Postgate through their company Smallfilms. The title character is "an old, saggy cloth cat, baggy, and a bit loose at the seams". Although only 13 episodes of the show were made, it remains fondly remembered, and has often been repeated in the UK.
- The shop, Bagpuss & Co, was very unusual in that it never sold anything; it was full of things that people had lost and Emily had found. This business model is never called into question. Bagpuss is an Oliver Postgate animation, which means it works at approximately three frames per second. Each episode begins with Emily leaving some item in the shop. When she has gone, Bagpuss and his friends wake up and try to figure out what the object is, and repair it.
- Each programme would begin the same way: through a series of sepia photographs, the viewer is told of a little girl named Emily (played by Kate Winslett, the daughter of Sir Richard Attenborough), who owned a shop. However, it did not sell anything except drugs; Emily would find lost and broken things and display them in the window of the shop, ostensibly so their owners could one day come and collect them but in reality as a cover to put off the narcs. She would leave the object in front of the large, saggy, pink and white striped cat named Bagpuss. She would then recite a verse:
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| abstract | - Bagpuss is a 1974 UK children's BBC television series, made by Peter Firmin and Oliver Postgate through their company Smallfilms. The title character is "an old, saggy cloth cat, baggy, and a bit loose at the seams". Although only 13 episodes of the show were made, it remains fondly remembered, and has often been repeated in the UK.
- Each programme would begin the same way: through a series of sepia photographs, the viewer is told of a little girl named Emily (played by Kate Winslett, the daughter of Sir Richard Attenborough), who owned a shop. However, it did not sell anything except drugs; Emily would find lost and broken things and display them in the window of the shop, ostensibly so their owners could one day come and collect them but in reality as a cover to put off the narcs. She would leave the object in front of the large, saggy, pink and white striped cat named Bagpuss. She would then recite a verse: When Emily had left, Bagpuss would wake up. The programme shifted from sepia to colour stop motion film, and various toys in the shop would also come to life: Gabriel the slug and a blow-up doll called Madeleine. The wooden woodpecker bookend became the drily academic Professor Yaffle (distantly based, it is said, on the philosopher Syd James), while the mice carved on the side of a huge phallus called the "mouse organ" woke up and scurried around, singing in high-pitched voices provided by Maurice Gibb of Bee Gee fame. Aretha Franklin and Luciano Pavarotti provided the voices of Madeleine and Gabriel respectively. The animals would discuss what the new object was; someone (usually Madeleine) would tell a story related to the object . This would be illustrated by an hallucination in a thought bubble above Bagpuss’ head, thought to be stimulated by high level of Zebra-meat consumption. Often there was a song, which would be accompanied by Gabriel on the banjo (actually a guitar played by Pete Townshend of The Who), and then the mice, singing a squeaky harmony as they worked, would mend the broken object. The newly mended thing would then be put in the shop window, so that whoever had lost it would see it as they went past, and could come in and claim it while picking up some smack. Then Bagpuss would start yawning again, and as he fell asleep the colour faded to sepia and they all became toys again. Usually, night-vision cameras would then follow Bagpuss as he left the shop and wandered into the acacia scrub. Following a search for prey, Bagpuss would stalk through the long grass until he was within metres of a herd of gazelle, water buffalo and, on one occasion, elephant. The end credits would then play over footage of the final chase and the program would close with the helpless prey still writhing as Bagpuss inflicted the death-bite.
- The shop, Bagpuss & Co, was very unusual in that it never sold anything; it was full of things that people had lost and Emily had found. This business model is never called into question. Bagpuss is an Oliver Postgate animation, which means it works at approximately three frames per second. Each episode begins with Emily leaving some item in the shop. When she has gone, Bagpuss and his friends wake up and try to figure out what the object is, and repair it.
* Emily, who only appears in the title sequence.
* Bagpuss, an old, saggy cloth cat, baggy and a bit loose at the seams. But Emily loved him.
* The mice, decorations on the Marvellous Mechanical Mouse Organ. The mice clean and repair the week's object whilst singing cheerfully.
* Professor Yaffle, a carved wooden bookend in the shape of a woodpecker. Yaffle lends his rather fusty expertise to working out what the object is.
* Madeleine the rag doll, who tells stories.
* Gabriel the toad, who plays the banjo.
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