Skippy Adventures in Bushtown (1997 - 1998)

Children's series
26 episodes x 30 minutes

Series synopsis:

Skippy the bush kangaroo is a capable, upright 'copter-flying’ park ranger who is the unofficial leader and resident good guy in Bushtown. With his friend Matilda the local TV journalist, and the quirky inventions of the eccentric genius Professor Angus McPouch, Skippy good humouredly deals with the many problems created by his nemesis the shonky Mayor Croco, and his vain, greedy wife and gang of goons.

Curator’s Notes:

Like a great many of Yoram Gross’s animations, this 2D animation is directly drawn from the world famous character ‘Skippy’, the kangaroo star of the 1960s live-action television show produced by Fauna Productions and broadcast around the world in 35 languages, and 84 countries.

Apart from sharing a name and species, this new, animated Skippy has no relationship with the original series. It is a completely new spin-off, following Yoram Gross’s tried and true formula of taking popular characters from other mediums and reshaping them into new characters with new stories and settings. Gross has now used this strategy many times, beginning originally with the animated Dot films, based on the character of Dot from the 1899, Australian children’s book Dot and the Kangaroo by Ethel C Pedly. This was followed by the successful films and television animation series based on the iconic book character Blinky Bill (1992); Tabaluga (1997) based on the famous German character of the same name; and again in 1999, a spin-off animation Flipper and Lopaka.

In animating ‘Skippy’, Gross is able to make him the central character totally involved in the action. ‘In the live-action series’, says Gross, ‘Skippy was really a courier, warning the humans that something was wrong, so they would go and fix it. Now Skippy can take care of each crisis himself.’ Skippy is now the park ranger and there are no human characters at all in the series.

In the animated series, the devious Croco and his wife provide a dramatic and comic adversary for Skippy. The choice of a crooked crocodile is an inspired act of stereotyping, as crocodiles are certainly not appealing bush animals in the way kangaroos are.

Using the same voice talent of Keith Scott and Robin Moore from the successful Blinky Bill series, with the addition of Jamie Oxenbould from Tabaluga, these three actors voice the entire series, creating a diverse range of accents, ages and character personalities.

Annemaree O'Brien

Titles in this series