Bananaman Unpeeled

One of the most recognisable faces to appear in DC Thomson's range of childrens' comics, Bananaman started life in the Nutty in 1980, then when that comic folded in 1985 he moved over to the Dandy, and with that having gone out of print in 2012 these days he's found in the Beano. Such was the character's popularity he not only had his own annual between 1983 and 1986 (despite the Nutty not receiving that honour), he also appeared in a series of animated five-minute shorts aired on the BBC for three series in 1983, 1984 and 1986 (with all the voices done by the Goodies, who allegedly thought the show was complete rubbish, and some rather catchy music), and it's those we're interested in here.

Before we get on to the chief oddity surrounding the series, one or two other things will help. All 40 of the shorts feature the copyright date of 1983, indicating they were all produced fairly close together. This is something the rather... limited (and often repeated) animation would appear to back up, as well as the occasional glitch: in a Series 1 episode, Appleman appears in a shot of a meeting of all the various recurring villains, despite the fact he wasn't introduced until Series 2, and in fact he disappears from said meeting later on.

Now you see him...

...Now you don't

If all 40 shorts were indeed produced together, that might account for some other oddities in the broadcast order, such as King Zorg declaring peace and then subsequently making two later attempts to take over the Earth. But the chief oddity: what is the final episode? If you go by series, then it's "Operation Total", which features a suitable climax as most of the recurring villains appear to take part in the titular operation to destroy Bananaman once and for all. If you go by broadcast order then it seems that "Memory Lane" (the only clip show episode in the series), which is listed as the penultimate Series 2 episode in places such as the episode listing on the DVD, was held back until June 1988 - more than two years after "Operation Total". (IMDB was the first place I heard about this, but BBC Genome seems to back it up.)

If the BBC thought "Memory Lane" was a more fitting endnote to the series, why did they hold it back for so long rather than showing it at the end of Series 3? Why is that episode also the only one without a title card? Why were all the shorts spaced out over such a long period of time - was that standard practice? Did the Goodies really hate the show? If they were all produced together, why does the third series feature a different opening narration (albeit only to change one word - the original used "amazing" twice, and the redone version changed the first instance to "exciting")? Why was Graeme Garden's name misspelled on some of the Series 3 episodes? Why are there several episodes later in the run that aren't actually about Bananaman fighting crime at all, but rather contending with a Random Events Plot? (Was the scriptwriter just churning ideas out to reach the agreed number of episodes?) These questions remain unanswered, and indeed uncared about.

A little more history to finish up: the animated series featured different designs for the characters, which were subsequently adopted for the comic strip. The episodes were repeated many times on CBBC until the end of the nineties, and during one of the final runs someone at the Dandy had the bright idea of adapting the TV episodes as comic strips (which were later reprinted in the mid-to-late noughties, this time to tie in with the series' DVD release) to tie in. You can now see each series as a compilation on the official Beano channel: Series 1, Series 2 and Series 3. If you'd like to see the episodes with all the opening and closing sequences intact, you can check out this fantastic channel, the owner of which has uploaded every episode apart from one and nothing else apart from a video of Dan Hill singing "Sometimes When We Touch". Perhaps that is the greatest mystery of all.

There, finished.