Ernst, Bobbie en de Rest (partially found early iteration of Dutch children-oriented TV series; 1988)
Low res. collage of a few of the series' episodes.
Status: Partially Found
Ernst, Bobbie en de Rest (English: Ernst, Bobbie and the Others) is a live-action children-oriented program from the Netherlands. It follows the title characters on their adventures through a different location each season. Every episode features a song in the middle of the episode, mostly centering around the conflict of the episode. The show is fondly remembered by many Dutch people who grew up between 1998 and 2010, with the show still appearing on reruns to this day.
What many Dutch kids wouldn't know is that this beloved series is a reboot of a series with the same name and main actors. The original "Ernst, Bobbie en de Rest" debuted in 1988 on the regional TV network Lokatel.
Lokatel was founded in 1986 as a TV network for the Dutch city of The Hague and thus focused on the city as its main source.[1] "Ernst, Bobbie" was commissioned as one of the only kids' shows on the network, with new episodes appearing every month. Ernst and Bobbie themselves had completely different designs when compared to the reboot. Bobbie was essentially the same character in terms of personality, with Ernst being a bit more of a bully in this series, compared to his role as the straight man in the reboot.
Video
The only still surviving footage of the original series is this promo that aired on Lokatel to advertise the show, with snippets of certain episodes being visible at the end. It also shows a song that wouldn't appear in the reboot. This is odd, many older songs Ernst and Bobbie wrote for their original debut in live shows and children's hospitals would reappear in the reboot.
The unarchived series is in sharp contrast to the reboot, which has every episode available on the official YouTube channel.
Lokatel would eventually cease to exist in 1993, it isn't known how many seasons and/or episodes the series had before the network's cancellation. Even its Dutch Wikipedia page ignores this original run of the series, only featuring information about the reboot and the two eventual feature films.