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

    Tom and Vicky are jolly young kids 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. He's currently driving around "The Little Red Tractor". 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, their Ping-Pong ball eyes 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!

    • For the record, Bert is the green frog-thing, and Fred is blue. Their red
       tentacled pal is called Squidge...

    • And whilst we're naming things, Tom and Vicky's dog is called Kevin,
       the fluffy pink cat is Flossie, and the tortoise is Flash...

 

   
    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...

 

     Tom and Vicky episodes

     Chocks Away!             The Tree House
     Destination Jupiter        Hide and Seek
     Bonfire Night               Treasure Garden
     The Tail of a Kite         Worm's Eye View
     The Mow-Kay Corral     Animal Hospital

 

     Tom and Vicky on DVD

     Tom and Vicky: Up, Up and Away
     5 episodes / R2 / Kids Club / July 2002

     Tom and Vicky: The Tree House
     5 episodes / R2 / 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 Ioule, 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


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