Sooty's Amazing Adventures (partially lost animated spin-off of Sooty; 1996-1997)
Title screen from the series.
Status: Partially Lost
Sooty's Amazing Adventures is an animated spin-off series of the popular show Sooty, created by Cosgrove Hall Films and Meridian Television. It originally aired on CiTV from 1997 to 1998.
The show revolves around Sooty and his friends who live in a theatre in an unnamed British seaside town. The main stage of the theatre has a trapdoor, which the gang used to go on various adventures and also back in time.
Availability
In 2014, it was revealed in an interview with Richard Cadell, the current rights owner of Sooty, that when he bought the rights to Sooty in 2008, he received a lot of archived Sooty material in the process. The material included the master tapes for this series, which he destroyed out of not liking it and not wanting anybody to see it.
However, eight episodes of the show were released on two VHS tapes, each containing four episodes, in 1997 and 1999. They are now quite difficult to come by, but the full tapes have been uploaded to YouTube by YouTube user Jimmy Sapphire.
In 2015, YouTube user The Sooteries Channel uploaded the original CITV broadcast of the episode "Close Encounters of the Furred Kind," which was not featured on any of the VHS tapes.
In 2016, the original CITV broadcasts of three episodes of the show, "The Big Picture," "Life's Such a Dragon" and "A Knight at the Theatre," which were not featured on any of the VHS tapes, were uploaded by YouTube users MrHammadmossop1988 and Old TV.
In 2017, part of a Norwegian-dubbed version of the episode "Hadrian's Wallpaper," which was not featured on any of the VHS tapes, was uploaded by YouTuber TeletubbiesThomasYesSuperMarioBrosSuperShowNo 2004.
Two trailers promoting the programme are also known to exist, and both are on YouTube. However, one of the trailers has the following dialogue spoken by Soo: "Well, he is rather a magical bear!" It is unknown which episode this came from. The same trailer features scenes from the episodes "A Fishy Tale," "Crocodile Aberdeen," and other episodes of which the titles are unknown.
A New Year trailer, which aired in 1997 and showcased the short-lived "CITV Kingdom" rebrand, also exists and has a scene from "Long John Sooty" in it.
On April 8th, 2022, YouTube user "Taped Off Telly" uploaded some of the remaining lost episodes online, leaving only "My Fair Katarina", Long John Sooty", and the first 2 minutes and 19 seconds of "Hadrian's Wallpaper" being lost, with the latter's cause was due to the fact that the person who uploaded the English version said that they got home late from school.
Audio Extract Transcript
Builder #1: Come along, lads. Put your backs into it.
Katarina: Oh, I do like to be beside the seaside! Oh, I do like to be beside the sea!
Builder #1: ...Bentley?
(The builders run off shouting.)
Katarina: Well, I don't normally have this effect on men!
Videos
Known Episodes
| # | Episode Title | Status |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Alas, Poor Sooty | Found |
| 2 | Hopalong Sooty | Found |
| 3 | Scampi and the Computer Chips | Found |
| 4 | A Hard Day's Knight | Found |
| 5 | Mummy's Boys | Found |
| 6 | Things That Go McSqueak in the Night | Found |
| 7 | Hot Air | Found |
| 8 | Desert Song | Found |
| 9 | A Fishy Tale | Found |
| 10 | The Abominable Snowball | Found |
| 11 | Mouse Busters | Found |
| 12 | My Fair Katarina | Lost |
| 13 | Close Encounters of the Furred Kind | Found |
| 14 | Mars, She's Making Eyes at Me | Found |
| 15 | A Knight at the Theatre | Found |
| 16 | Crocodile Aberdeen | Found |
| 17 | Long John Sooty | Lost |
| 18 | Hadrian's Wallpaper | Partially Lost |
| 19 | Journey to the Center of the Aaaargh! | Found |
| 20 | The Big Picture | Found |
| 21 | Life's Such a Dragon | Found |
| 22 | The Loch Ness Monster | Found |
| 23 | It Came from the Coal Shed | Found |
| 24 | Life's a Beach | Found |
| 25 | They're Playing Our Toon | Found |
| 26 | Jurassic Car Park | Found |
See Also
CITV (ITV)
- Astro Farm (partially found CiTV claymation series; 1990s)
- Billy (partially found CITV animated series; 1998-1999)
- The Diamond Brothers: South by South East (partially found ITV adaptation of children's detective book; 1991)
- Dream Street (found British children's TV series; 1999-2002)
- The Fugitives (partially found British children's sci-fi TV series; 2005)
- Pocoyo (partially lost pilots of Spanish-British children's animated comedy TV series; 2002-2004)
- Ripley and Scuff (partially found British children's television series; 2002-2003)
- The Spooks of Bottle Bay (partially found British children's TV series; 1993-1995)
- StarStreet (partially lost British children's television series; 2001-2002)
- Titch (partially lost British stop-motion animated TV series based on books; 1997-2001)
- The Twins (partially found animated series; 2000)