''Stoppit and Tidyup'' was a British
children's
A child ( : children) is a human being between the stages of birth and puberty, or between the developmental period of infancy and puberty. The legal definition of ''child'' generally refers to a minor, otherwise known as a person young ...
animated cartoon television series produced by CMTB Animation and Queensgate Productions in 1987 and screened on
BBC One
BBC One is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network owned and operated by the BBC. It is the corporation's flagship network and is known for broadcasting mainstream programming, which includes BBC News television bulletins, ...
with repeats on
BBC Two from 12 September to 5 December 1988. The episodes feature two protagonists, Stoppit and Tidyup, interacting with various other inhabitants of the mythical land of Do As You're Told. Each episode was five minutes in length, and narrated by
Terry Wogan
Sir Michael Terence Wogan (; 3 August 1938 – 31 January 2016) was an Irish radio and television broadcaster who worked for the BBC in the UK for most of his career. Between 1993 and his semi-retirement in December 2009, his BBC Radio 2 week ...
. The series was created by Charles Mills and Terry Brain (who had previously created the
claymation
Clay animation or claymation, sometimes plasticine animation, is one of many forms of stop-motion animation. Each animated piece, either character or background, is "deformable"—made of a malleable substance, usually plasticine clay.
Tra ...
series ''
The Trap Door'' in 1984), and partly funded by ''
The Tidy Britain Group''. The third member of the team behind the show was animator
Steve Box who later gained success after moving to
Aardman Animations
Aardman Animations Limited (also known as Aardman Studios, simply Aardman or Aardman Animation and stylised as AARDMAN as of 2022) is a British animation studio based in Bristol, England. It is known for films made using stop-motion and clay ani ...
.
The introduction theme music to Stoppit and Tidyup's friends coming along the screen at the start of each episode was "Follow the Leader" by Bobby Hunter, Eric Peters and Robert Hunter from the Spectrum mood library.
Description
The short-running series features microscopic characters who live in the fictitious land of "Do As You're Told", a strange and colourful place (that was not completely separate from the human world, as one episode features a busy road and another features children playing) whose inhabitants are bugs named after orders directed at children by their parents. Unlike ''The Trap Door'', which ran for 40 episodes over two series, only a single series of thirteen episodes was produced. Each episode is named after a character that features in the episode (however, the character "Not Now" did not have an episode named after him because he was the pet of the series' antagonist "I Said No").
The series followed the exploits of the
eponym
An eponym is a person, a place, or a thing after whom or which someone or something is, or is believed to be, named. The adjectives which are derived from the word eponym include ''eponymous'' and ''eponymic''.
Usage of the word
The term ''epon ...
ous Stoppit (a red bug of fluff with arms and legs), and Tidyup (a blue-haired, necktie-wearing purple bug who is shaped like a bowling pin), in their native land, which is filled with giant-to-them gherkins. Supporting characters include Beequiet and Beehave (two, as their names suggest,
bees, the former of whom is huge and has a pursed-up mouth, but the latter is much smaller than him and does not, and they both have a mop of red hair at the top of their heads), Eat Your Greens (a blue-haired, green
frog
A frog is any member of a diverse and largely carnivorous group of short-bodied, tailless amphibians composing the order Anura (ανοὐρά, literally ''without tail'' in Ancient Greek). The oldest fossil "proto-frog" ''Triadobatrachus'' is ...
-like bug), Comb Your Hair (a blue
cow
Cattle (''Bos taurus'') are large, domesticated, cloven-hooved, herbivores. They are a prominent modern member of the subfamily Bovinae and the most widespread species of the genus ''Bos''. Adult females are referred to as cows and adult ma ...
-like spider with long orange hair and a bell round his neck), Wash Your Face (a
Wellington boot
The Wellington boot was originally a type of leather boot adapted from Hessian boots, a style of military riding boot. They were worn and popularised by Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington. The "Wellington" boot became a staple of pr ...
-wearing bug without arms who usually appears brown with black boots, but a bath revealed him to be pink with yellow boots), Go And Play (a light green bug who wore shorts and trainers), the big bad I Said No (an angry red bug who has a pink pet dog-like one called Not Now), Hurry Up (a flying bug of red and yellow scribbles), Calm Down (a yellow bug with a blue umbrella), Don't Do That (a red bug who lives in a shell), Go To Bed (a tired, pink-haired white bug), Sayplease and Saythankyou (a two-faced plant-like bug), Clean Your Teeth (a purple-haired, sunglasses-wearing orange bug with huge teeth), and Take Care (a flying blue
kangaroo
Kangaroos are four marsupials from the family Macropodidae (macropods, meaning "large foot"). In common use the term is used to describe the largest species from this family, the red kangaroo, as well as the antilopine kangaroo, eastern ...
-like bug). There are also groups of extra characters referred to as Naughties (who are purple with yellow spots, and will cause "Naughtypox" when touched) and Sit Downs (who are pink and have magic powers that can cure Naughtypox). None of the characters actually speak decipherable words as such. Instead they gabble, grunt, squeak, and hum whilst series narrator
Terry Wogan
Sir Michael Terence Wogan (; 3 August 1938 – 31 January 2016) was an Irish radio and television broadcaster who worked for the BBC in the UK for most of his career. Between 1993 and his semi-retirement in December 2009, his BBC Radio 2 week ...
unravels the tale for viewers. The characters' noises were provided by the show's co-creator Terry Brain but he was not credited for it.
The storylines are notable for their random, abstract nature, and the fact that an episode will frequently end without any moral message at all. For example, in the twelfth episode, "Clean Your Teeth", it begins to snow in the middle of summer, and Stoppit gets left behind on his own while Tidyup and Clean Your Teeth spend the rest of the episode playing on sledges at the end, even though he loves the snow.
Episode guide and character titles
All thirteen episodes featuring Stoppit & Tidyup's friends were shown on BBC One and repeated on BBC Two as part of the
Children's BBC
BBC Children's and Education is the BBC division responsible for media content for children in the UK. Since the launch of specially dedicated television channels in 2002, the services have been marketed under two brands. CBBC (short for Chi ...
strand, as it was known before 1997, on Mondays at 3:50pm.
Production
Unlike its predecessor, ''Stoppit and Tidyup'' was
cel-animated, and while a single episode of ''The Trap Door'' would take Charles Mills and Terry Brain an average of two weeks to write, build and shoot in 1984, a single episode of this series would only take them an average of ten days to write and film in 1987. After the series concluded, they mainly did commercials and title sequences.
Media
A series of twelve tie-in books were published by
Price Stern Sloan
Price Stern Sloan (originally known as Price/Stern/Sloan) or PSS! was a publisher (now an imprint of the Penguin Group) that was founded in Los Angeles in the early 1960s to publish the Mad Libs that Roger Price and Leonard Stern had concocted ...
Ltd. when the series was first aired in 1988, and an illustrated
annual
Annual may refer to:
*Annual publication, periodical publications appearing regularly once per year
** Yearbook
** Literary annual
*Annual plant
*Annual report
*Annual giving
*Annual, Morocco, a settlement in northeastern Morocco
*Annuals (band), ...
was released in 1989.
All thirteen episodes were released on
VHS by BBC Video (BBCV 4207) in that same year, but this is now out of print (it also segued them together, and dubbed over Wogan's opening lines for all except the first episode with the first few seconds of the theme song).
All thirteen episodes were later rereleased on
DVD
The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kind ...
by
Universal Pictures Video and
Right Entertainment in 2004.
See also
*''
The Trap Door'' (also created by Charles Mills and Terry Brain)
References
External links
*
*
''Stoppit and Tidyup'' at Toonhound''Stoppit and Tidyup'' at '80s Cartoons(archived on 17 December 2005 by the
Wayback Machine
The Wayback Machine is a digital archive of the World Wide Web founded by the Internet Archive, a nonprofit based in San Francisco, California. Created in 1996 and launched to the public in 2001, it allows the user to go "back in time" and see ...
)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Stoppit And Tidyup
BBC children's television shows
British children's animated comedy television series
1980s British animated television series
1988 British television series debuts
1988 British television series endings
Television series by Universal Television