Bassie and Adriaan
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Bassie & Adriaan | |
|---|---|
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| Genre | Adventure |
| Running time | 25 minutes (without commercials) |
| Creator(s) | Aad van Toor e.a. |
| Starring | Aad van Toor Bas van Toor Paul van Gorcum e.a. |
| Country of origin | Netherlands |
| Original channel | Nederland 2 (TROS) |
| Original run | 1961-10-01–2003-08-05 |
| No. of episodes | 144 |
| IMDb profile | |
Bassie and Adriaan are a popular clown and acrobat duo who featured in their own television series, taped between 1976 and 1994 and (as of 2005) still aired in the Netherlands and Flanders (Belgium) television. Before Bassie and Adriaan went on television they were a successful acrobatic duo who performed in many Dutch circuses. The television series consistently feature the duo, from time to time assisted by a parrot called Tweety, a dog called Lara or a small robot named Robin. Mostly aired on public television by broadcaster TROS, the series then switched to commercial broadcasters such as Kindernet and later on the Dutch version of the American children's channel Nickelodeon.
The plots of the ten-to-thirteen-episodes-long series center around the duo getting involved in a criminal scheme by not-so-intelligent bad guys. Bassie and Adriaan are then falsely accused and spend the rest of the series tracking down the criminals and turning them over to the police. In many episodes their adventures lead them to exotic places in the south of Europe, mostly in Spain, the Canary Islands and Greece. Well-known crooks in the series are "B1", a mafia-like character, "B2", a nearly deaf and slow-moving criminal, "B100", a loyal but very unlucky detective-like person, "Handige Harry" ("Handy Harry"), a producer of dud bombs, "Vlugge Japie" ("Fast Japie"), a famous jewelery thief, and "de Baron" ("the Baron"), the evil mastermind of the gang. There was also a season that played in America and even one across all of Europe, all filmed on location.
Bassie and Adriaan are still very popular although Adriaan (Aad van Toor) has ended his public appearances because of his battle against cancer. In 2006 he beat the cancer, but remains retired. Bassie (Bas van Toor) still performs jokes, but has been forced to do it in a one-man show. Adriaan was for a time replaced by a female magician, but children did not accept her and a personal feud between her and Bassie ended the tour before it even started. Now Bassie tours across the Netherlands with his show Bassie en zijn vriendjes (Bassie and his friends), doing a lot better than he did with the magician. He's also started making television again. Bassie and Adriaan turned their successful television series into a profitable company, selling products ranging from comic books to DVD's.
The following series were aired on Dutch public television:
- 1976: Series 1 - Bassie en Adriaan en "de Plaaggeest" ("The bully")
- 1978: Series 2 - Bassie en Adriaan en "het geheim van de sleutel" ("The secret of the key")
- 1979: Series 3 - Bassie en Adriaan en "de diamant" ("The diamond")
- 1982: Series 4 - Bassie en Adriaan en "de huilende professor" ("The crying professor")
- 1985: Series 5 - Bassie en Adriaan en "het geheim van de schatkaart" ("The secret of the treasure map")
- 1987: Series 6 - Bassie en Adriaan en "de verdwenen kroon" ("The disappeared crown")
- 1989: Series 7 - Bassie en Adriaan en "de verzonken stad" ("The sunken city")
- 1992: Series 8 - Bassie en Adriaan en "de geheimzinnige opdracht" ("The secretive assignment")
- 1994: Series 9 - Bassie en Adriaan en "de reis vol verrassingen" ("The journey full of surprises")
- 1995: Series 10 - Bassie en Adriaan en "liedjes uit grootmoeders tijd" ("Songs from grandmothers days")
There was also a series of educational shorties (about 5 minutes an episode) especially made for Belgium.
[edit] End of an era, start of an era: The New Adventures of Clown Bassie
Since 2005 Bas van Toor (Bassie) started making his own tv shows, not solo, but without Adriaan. Instead the cast of Bassies roadshow Bassie en zijn vriendjes joins him. Because Aad van Toor (Adriaan) did the directing and writing of scripts for the Bassie & Adriaan series, aswell as jointly composing and writing songs for the series, Bas is doing all that himself this time. This caused the new show to have a completely different feel than Bassie & Adriaan, to the annoyance of many fans of the original series. Though not quite near the enormous succes of Bassie & Adriaan, Bassie has managed to land pretty good on his feet. Here are the series he's made so far:
- 2005: Mini series - "De reis van Zwarte Piet" ("The journey of Zwarte Piet")
- 2006: Series 1 - Bassie en "de ontvoering" ("The kidnapping")
