Chicken Minute (partially lost Canadian puppet TV series; 1990-1993)

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A very rare LaserDisc, showing Minute, Mama Chicken and Anatole.

Chicken Minute (Cocotte Minute in the alternative French) was a puppet TV series made in Canada that originally ran from 1990 to 1993. It was set in the Canadian bayou.

The puppet characters are anthropomorphic animals (almost always shown waist up, of course). The main one is simple-minded crocodile Anatole, who likes fishing and hanging with his friends: fox Minute who plays guitar and who is in a relationship with hen Mama Chicken who cooks delicious popcorn (Minute became vegetarian for her). The narrator is Ulysses, a chick still living in his egg and who is extremely smart despite his age. The main villain is Mudbelly, a swamp monster who lives among mud and likes to play nasty tricks on the other characters, but can be friendly with them too at times. Almost every episode contains one or more musical numbers performed by one or more characters.

Only a few episodes are known to have been released on VHS, in the English dub, and at least one LaserDisc. Of these, only three have been uploaded on YouTube ("Coop de Ville", "The Singing Contest", and "The Bayou Treasure").

Lately, one of the original staff that worked on the show, Jean Gagnon (art director, background and puppet designer) uploaded several episodes on YouTube in the French dub (however, some of these have their audio off-sync, so be warned). Many more episodes are still missing, though.

According to Gagnon, there were legal disputes between the authors of the show, which is possibly a reason as to why this series has never gotten a full release.

List of Found Episodes

Each episode's number is taken from the opening narration. This should take priority over MSN Entertainment's own numbering.

The number of episodes is uncertain, and some episodes are not described in the MSN list.

External links

MSN Entertainment list of episodes with plot descriptions

Entry on the Planète Jeunesse website (incomplete)