Paddington

1975 United Kingdom

Stop motion puppet series produced by Paddington's creator, Michael Bond. The series was made by London based animation studio FilmFair who gave it a distinctive look by having the characters as three- dimensional against 2 dimensional line drawing backgrounds.

Animator Ivor Wood also worked on The Magic Roundabout and Postman Pat. The series was narrated by Michael Hordern. Paddington Bear first appeared in print in 1958. In the first story he is found by the Brown family, sitting on a suitcase at Paddington Station with a label attached to his coat: "Please look after this bear. Thank you." The inspiration for this was the author's recollections of WWII newsreels of evacuees being ushered away from London at various railway stations to the apparent safety of the countryside. Paddington had ventured a little farther. Deepest darkest Peru to be precise. His favourite food is marmalade sandwiches.

A firm favourite for many years Paddington is now quite rightly regarded as a classic of children's literature, having been translated in book form into many languages and selling over 30 million copies. His most recent adventures were published in 2008 and to date two box-office smash hit movies have been released.

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Published on January 17th, 2019. Written by Laurence Marcus for Television Heaven.

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