Teetime and Claudia

I never thought I’d get to watch enough of Teetime and Claudia to write an article on it. Aside from one episode which was on YouTube - and half an episode I managed to dig up - it looked as though further footage would remain out of reach. The BFI didn’t hold any copies and, given the lack of people who recognised it, it was unlikely anyone was going to come forwards with a set of episodes. But fortune favours the patient and, finally, someone uploaded several episodes to YouTube a couple of years ago.

Yes, thanks to the ADC TV Collection YouTube channel - whose owner sadly passed away last year - I was now able to take a more comprehensive look at the series. The episodes themselves aren’t from the original broadcasts and, in fact, they come from repeats which aired on the short-lived, and little known, digital channel Carlton Kids at the turn of the 21st century.

But what is Teetime and Claudia about? And who was involved with it? Well, it’s time to take a closer look.

Teetime (voiced by Gerry Cowan) is a blissfully simple greyish brown dog who lives in a curious harmony with Claudia (voiced by Tessa Worsley), a ginger cat who is as clever as she is smugly condescending (which is off the scale). Naturally, Teetime and Claudia are domesticated pets, so they live with Auntie, a bespectacled lady rocking a bob haircut who is only ever heard distantly mumbling and burbling.

And Teetime and Claudia aren’t the only animals living in Auntie’s picturesque bungalow and vast garden. There’s also Hush the grey parrot, Gon the sluggish tortoise, Concorde the rather unfortunate pigeon and Nibbles the repetitive squirrel. Together, all of these characters feature in a series of stories as remembered by Teetime and Claudia.

Within these stories, there always seems to be a mini-disaster unfolding. Nibbles the squirrel loses his nutbox, so Teetime (keen on rushing round like crazy looking everywhere) and Claudia (who suggests carefully looking, although she barely lifts a paw) set out to find this. Another episode finds Teetime accidentally breaking the bird table and having to hide from Auntie’s wrath, which ends up directed at Claudia. And Auntie’s bungalow almost floods when she leaves the tap running and goes out, but will Teetime be able to lap up all the water and save the day?

Teetime and Claudia was produced by Yorkshire Television for ITV in the early 1980s, with the first series of 13 episodes airing at the start of 1983 and the second series of, again, 13 episodes going out at the end of 1983. Episodes were broadcast during, firstly, the 12pm children’s slot and, later on the same day, in the 4pm slot as part of Children’s ITV late afternoon slot.

The series was written by Simon Purcell with the animation provided by Digby Turpin, a duo who had previously worked together on Yorkshire’s animated series Little Blue in the late 1970s. Teetime and Claudia, as with most of Yorkshire’s children’s output of the time, was produced by Joy Whitby, although when I spoke to her about the series a few years back, she could barely remember it. Directing the series was John Marsden, who would later work on Yorkshire’s The Giddy Game Show and The Raggy Dolls.

During the 1970s and 80s, Yorkshire Television - under the stewardship of the remarkable Joy Whitby - produced a seemingly endless slew of peerless children’s television. However, as I’ve already mentioned, Teetime and Claudia fails to stand out in people’s memories. I certainly can’t remember it, although it’s likely I may have watched some of the repeat airings, and my main memory of preschooler cat and dog-based animations is dominated by Mop and Smiff.

And it turns out that, whilst far from abominable, Teetime and Claudia is fairly humdrum. First off, the illustrations are relatively crude. Sure, there’s a similarity to Mary, Mungo and Midge, but it’s a similarity where all the stylistic detail has been stripped out. The actual animation is limited too, with a lot of the movement delivered by the rostrum camera scanning over the illustrations.

Teetime and Claudia certainly isn’t below broadcast quality, but it struggles to push the quality levels beyond mediocre. And this is a surprise, given that the team’s previous effort, Little Blue, was far from static and, instead, had plenty of movement and energy informing its animation. But what of the stories? Would these provide a more creative landscape, one where the viewer’s imagination would be pushed in all directions?

Well, you know, they’re not too bad for a lunchtime preschoolers show. The narratives do tap into something which chimes with all preschoolers: causing chaos at home. So, in that respect, the stories are perfectly primed to engage. But, again, whilst the stories are serviceable, they’re relatively humdrum.

I mean, if you compare them to the animated sections of Mop and Smiff, where all sorts of fantastical and manic things happen, the adventures of Teetime and Claudia pale in comparison. And, as a result, the 10-minute episodes seem to drag on as the uneventful events unfold.

What I did like about Teetime and Claudia, however, was the humour contained throughout. Okay, it’s not razor sharp, but do the under-fives really need anything more than chortlesome? The contrast between the well-meaning idiocy of Teetime and the self-absorbed nature of Claudia is humourously explored, with Claudia - who is quite the irritating narcissist, with shades of sadism - intent on setting Teetime up for fall after fall, mostly as she sits and cleans herself as various catastrophes unfold.

And then there’s the child-like understanding that our two protagonists have of Auntie’s world. This imbues a healthy dose of charm and finds the telephone being named the “bring, bring”, the dustbins dubbed “the tin cupboards” and even a tradesman referred to as “Wipe” due to the fact that Auntie always tells him to wipe his boots.

I was also particularly keen on the catchy, rinky-dink-dink synth theme tune by Alan Parker, with lyrics which set out the Teetime and Claudia dynamics from the get go. And the closing theme, which is an instrumental version of the opening, has a curiously hypnotic and sleepy feel to it. Perhaps, combined with the slow pace of the stories, this is why so many people have forgotten about Teetime and Claudia, they simply fell asleep at the end of the episodes.

Nonetheless, I’m glad I finally got to cover it and would recommend watching an episode or two, but only, if like myself, you have an unhealthy obsession with catching up on everything the 1980s had to offer.