Dennis puppet show

[Digifiend]

Finally! A Facebook friend posted this picture of the cast of the Dennis and Gnasher TCC puppet show. I've seen it mentioned in a few books (the 50th anniversary one was the first place I heard about it), but never seen a picture before now. I wonder why Mum is brunette instead of the usual blonde?

[Tin Can Tommy]

Are there any clips of this show on youtube or anything? A quick search resulted in nothing.

Do DC Thomson/The Children's Channel have it in their archive or has it been lost to the ages.

I want to watch it out of curiousity but I wouldnt be surprised if the puppet show is terrible maybe even worse than the 2009 Dennis cartoon or the Beano video (with it's dodgy animation and voicework) the Beano Interactive DVD (with it's even dodgier animation if you could actually call that animation and if i can remember correctly it may not even have used voicework.)

[dandy mad]

I remember watching this back in the early 90s and thought that the puppets and computer generated backgrounds didn't go well together tbh

[Digifiend]

TCC - and it's owner, Flextech - no longer exists. Flextech ended up as part of Virgin Media, who sold their TV channels to Sky. If anyone has it, it's them.

[Old Freddy]

I want to watch it out of curiousity but I wouldnt be surprised if the puppet show is terrible maybe even worse than the 2009 Dennis cartoon or the Beano video (with it's dodgy animation and voicework) the Beano Interactive DVD (with it's even dodgier animation if you could actually call that animation and if i can remember correctly it may not even have used voicework.)

The Beano interactive DVD had voices, but everyone's vocabulary was worse than Pingu's. Everyone talked gibberish. The animation was minimal but I can let that slide because it's meant to be more like a comic strip. As for the artwork, the stuff by Barrie Appleby wasn't very good imho but I thought Nigel's work was a lot better.

It's nice to see a picture of this puppet series, the puppets actually look pretty true to the comic but there's something off-putting about Dennis' mum. I'm not sure if it's the head shape or the hair colour, or both.

[Tin Can Tommy]

Dennis' Mum never did have a very consistent design unlike Dennis' Dad.

[TwoHeadedBoy]

Weird, I posted that picture on Facebook on the 19th of January, looking for information about it. Seems word travelled! The closest I got to seeing it was one of my friends saying that his brother had a VHS full of episodes, around 20 years ago. This is obviously futile, ha ha!

[Old Freddy]

If they released the episodes on VHS, with some hope that will mean that the show is not completely lost, and that someone still has a copy.

[TwoHeadedBoy]

No such luck, it was a VHS recorded off the telly.

[Digifiend]

I assume the tape is now either overwritten or lost?

[TwoHeadedBoy]

Yeah, it's either lost or stuck somewhere in an attic. Never spoke to the guy's brother before, and the actual guy I know has moved to another part of the country, so who knows what fate will become of the tape?

I've emailed Dave Barclay (the creator of the puppets) asking if he had any tapes of it, but have yet to receive a reply.

[felneymike]

I remember having The Children's Channel in the early 90's (when "having satellite" was still a big thing, and the concept of a whole channel of cartoons mind-blowing). However I only ever saw one tiny clip of this on an advert. I wonder if it was anything like the Viz puppet animations?