Trazan Apansson - Julens konung (Partially found Swedish children's TV series; 1976)
Trazan Apansson - Julens konung was a children's TV series broadcasted on Swedish Television (SVT) TV1 for their Christmas holiday programming 1976. The series consisted of nine one hour long episodes, airing every morning at 9 am for nine days between 24 December 1976 and 1 January 1977.
Background
Article in Swedish TV magazine advertising the series, 1976
Status: Partially Found/Lost
The show's creator, Swedish comedian and actor Lasse Åberg, got the charge by Swedish Television to create a show for the 1976 year's Christmas morning programming Jullovsmorgon for children. For this, he wrote and produced Trazan Apansson - julens konung, and the show was the first series starring the characters Trazan and Banarne[1]. The show consisted of sketches and musical numbers by the two main characters mixed with cartoons. The show was well received among the general public, although some instances were unhappy about the Christmas programming missing focus on Christianity and the religious aspects of Christmas[2].
Trazan Apansson is a human character played by Lasse Åberg. Trazan has a monkey named Banarne (played by Klasse Möllberg) as a side-kick, and the series is set in a jungle. The name "Trazan" is a pun based on the famous fictional character Tarzan, as "trasa" is the Swedish word for washcloth, giving the name "Trazan" a comedic sentiment. The name of the show "Julens konung" ("the Christmas king") is a pun based on the Swedish title for Tarzan, "Djurens konung" ("the animal king").
The series is thought to have been reprised once in 1978[1]. When Swedish Television planned to reprise the series once again in 1979, archivists were found to mistakenly have demagnetized and deleted the original copies of all episodes of the series[3]. This was allegedly due to the archivists marking the documentation papers for the tapes with the wrong code, so that instead of preserving them, the tapes went to demagnetization[4]. Swedish Television tried to investigate if a few working copies (rushes) that existed were sufficient for airing, but they were regarded as being of too low quality[4].
Partial finding
One copy of the second episode of the series is known to exist, a home recording on Betamax made by a private person on 25 December 1976[5]. The Betamax copy has since been digitized and a 20 minute reel (without the cartoons due to copyright) of it has since 2019 been uploaded to YouTube[6].
The other episodes are as of 2023 presumed lost.
The whereabouts of the rushes that existed back in 1979 is unknown.
| # | Air date | Status |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 24 December 1976 | Lost |
| 2 | 25 December 1976 | Found |
| 3 | 26 December 1976 | Lost |
| 4 | 27 December 1976 | Lost |
| 6 | 29 December 1976 | Lost |
| 5 | 28 December 1976 | Lost |
| 6 | 29 December 1976 | Lost |
| 7 | 30 December 1976 | Lost |
| 8 | 31 December 1976 | Lost |
| 9 | 1 January 1977 | Lost |
Legacy
As a response to the mistake by Swedish Television, the second series Trazan & Banarne, was created as a replacement for the first series. The new series was produced in 1980[7], and has been reprised many times on Swedish Television since.
Links
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 https://www.op.se/2014-06-06/banarne-rockar-fett-pa-yran
- ↑ https://data.riksdagen.se/fil/B7D37EBF-EFB9-4DE0-BCE4-D6435AF14876
- ↑ https://sverigesradio.se/artikel/5406716
- ↑ 4.0 4.1
- ↑ https://smdb.kb.se/catalog/id/001428150
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAe9ONGEx0M
- ↑ https://www.ttela.se/n%C3%B6je/ny-banankontakt-med-trazan-och-banarne-1.58462068
