"Come and share the happy times with Tom and Vicky,
    Playing in their Grandad's garden..."
 

    Tom and Vicky are jolly young siblings who have lots of jolly garden fun and games
    with their equally-jolly grandad. But here's the rub, Tom, Vicky, Grandad, their,
    friends, the trees in the garden, indeed their whole jolly world is formed out of
    swatches of material with big chunky stitching along every seam - just like the
    kind of oversize, irregular stitches we all used when we were seven year's old
    and sewing together our first "hedgehog" pin cushion at school!

    Yes indeed, Tom and Vicky live in a material world. And so do Bert and Fred,
    the frogs who live by Grandad's pond. Bert and Fred's silly adventures run
    concurrently with those of the bigger folks as they interact with objects around
    the garden or indeed, beneath it in the subterranean world within their pond.

    "Tom and Vicky" was created and directed by Martin Pullen, who previously
    helmed numerous FilmFair productions including Huxley Pig and The Gingerbread
    Man. The music for the series comes from Brain Daly of Postman Pat fame,
    and he has great fun, mixing music hall styles for the songs about garden
    games, hide and seek, and pirates. Some of those tracks seem to have
    stepped straight out of a Lionel Bart musical. 

       

    Now take a look at Grandad. He's voiced by Sir Richard Attenborough, and
    the character even looks a bit like him, with his cheery face and beard.
    Grandad's always got a far-fetched story to tell his niece and nephew.
    He likes to spin great yarns about elephants and strawberry jam and
    other such nonsense, much to Tom and Vicky's delight.

    This series design is simply splendid. Sequences are segued together via
    a series of crayoned interstitials, straight out of primary school. And there's a
    clever little trick with the animation, too. When ever Bert and Fred, or many of
    the other garden critters blink or "take", their Ping-Pong ball eyes inflate and
    disappear, just for a frame or two. The technique is taken further with Spider,
    whose multiple eyeballs "rove" atop his red body as he traverses the garden!

 

    Know your frogs

    For the record, Bert is the green frog-thing, and Fred is blue...

 

    Stitched up

    During the opening credits, Tom, Vicky, Grandad and the gang construct the
    title of the series out of big felt-stitched letters. They then repeat the trick
    during the closing crawl, spelling out "The End"...

 

     The Garden Gang              Pond Pals
    Tom                              Fred the blue frog
    Vicky                            Bert the green frog
    Grandad                        Squidge the crayfish
    Kevin the dog
    Flossie the pink cat          +
    Flash the tortoise            Veronica (Vicky's doll)
    Primrose the donkey         Hippolotamus (a patchwork hippo)
    Lottie the Hen
    Dickie the bird
    Hedgehog
    Mitzi the caterpillar
    Sylvia Worm
    Mouse
    Ladybird
    Spider

 

   
    Merchandise

    You may want to hound down the three 24page tie-in books published
    by Granada Media. Animal Hospital, Chocks Away!, and The Mow-Kay Corral
    are adapted from a trio of episodes, and illustrated with plethora of stills
    from each. The trio were later combined into one storybook, Tom
    and Vicky: Stories from Grandad's Garden...

 

     Broadcast info

     The series premiered on ITV, on Friday 9th January 1998...

 

     Tom and Vicky episodes

    The Tree House                  Dancing with Dragons
    Where's Kevin?                   Hey Presto
    Destination Jupiter              Flossie's Birthday   
    Animal Hospital                  The Potty Potters
    Juke Box Jive                     The Great Detective
    Hide and Seek                    Isn't Nature Wonderful
    Treasure Garden                 Barbecue       
    Worm's Eye View                A New Home for Flossie
    Sur-prize Sur-prize             Chocks Away!
    Rainbow's End                    Bonfire Night 
    Prehysterical Monsters        Tale of a Kite  
    Magic Beanstalks               The Mow-Kay Corral
    Scarecrow                        A Day at the Theatre

 

     Tom and Vicky on DVD


      Tom and Vicky: Up, Up and Away
                Region 2 / five episodes / Kids Club / July 2002

      Tom and Vicky: The Tree House
                Region 2 / five episodes / Kids Club / July 2002

 

     a Wizard Production
     for Granada Television

    created and directed by Martin Pullen

    producer:            Edward Bignell
    exec prods:         Annie Miles, Bryan Daly
    music:                Brian Daly    
    writer:                Jimmy Hibbert
    animation:          Daryl Marsh, Andy Joule, Mark Waring,
                              Ruth Whiter,Timon Dowdeswell
    additional
    animation:          Tobias Fouracre, Mike Cottee, Simon Badham
    model makers:    Colin Armitage, Csilla de Bagota,
                              Julie Otten, Karen Tomlin, Sharon Wonnacott,
                              Liana Dognini, Sue Harrison, Gill Simpson,
                              Annie Collenette, Max Wildish
    puppet designs:   Simon Quinn
    puppets:             Blakey-Haden, Global Puppet Army
    script editor:       Hilary Baverstock
    musical
     orchestration:     Simon Chamberlain
    songs sung by:    Justin Fletcher
    prod assistant:    Jo Newy
    prod manager:    John Gregory
    sound:                Russell Smithson
    editors:              Alex Maddison, Bob Cockerell
    art director:        Maggie Haden
    d.o.p:                 Gordon Hickie, John Duffy, Nick Hughes
    voices:               Sir Richard Attenborough (Grandad)
                             Rik Mayall (Bert / Squidge)
                             Tim Whitnall (Tom)
                             Fleur Taylor (Vicky)

 

      On the web


     Fire Mountain
     They co-produced the series with Wizard and Granada...

 
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