The Woodentops (TV series)
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The Woodentops was a children's television series first shown on BBC Television in 1955. It was created by Freda Lingstrom and Maria Bird and featured on the Friday edition of Watch with Mother. The main characters were a nuclear family of wooden dolls who lived on a farm:
- Daddy Woodentop
- Mummy Woodentop
- Jenny Woodentop
- Willy Woodentop
- Baby Woodentop
The children, Jenny and Willy, were twins.
Other characters included:
- Buttercup the Cow
- Spotty Dog (or, as announced at the start of each episode, "..the very biggest spotty dog you ever did see")
- Mrs Scrubbitt (who comes to "help" Mrs Woodentop)
- Sam (who helps Daddy Woodentop with the animals)
- Scripts and music: Maria Bird
- Puppeteers: Audrey Atterbury, Molly Gibson and Gordon Murray
- Voices: Eileen Brown, Josephina Ray, Peter Hawkins
Curiously, Daddy Woodentop never wore a shirt and spoke with a country yokel accent, whilst Mummy and the twins were both extremely well dressed and well spoken. Mrs Scrubbitt was suitably reserved.
The music at the beginning and end of each story is taken from the 22nd piece of the set of 25 Norwegian folk songs and dances for piano, Opus 17 by Edvard Grieg. This music, which is quite short in duration, is called "Kulokk", which translates to "Cow-Call". It is divided into two sections, the first of which is used for the introduction and the second part for the end of each story.
Typical of Grieg's style and astonishing expressive power, it occasionally appears as a leitmotive in the stories, hummed by Mummy Woodentop from time to time.
