Wednesday 30 July 2008

Monkey is back!!

I was watching the BBC yesterday and their Olympics trailer came on and I hadn't seen it yet.

"Hmm this looks familiar, looks like ... Pigsy, no, can't be... "
but it is... Monkey (Magic) is back!! In animated form.

Now to be honest, I don't remember that much about the show, only that my sister, brother and I would never miss an episode. Something about a pink cloud, a growing matchstick, a guy called Sandy and an androgynous person named Tripitaka on a white horse (later confirmed it was a monk played by a girl.)
But for some reason, I, and just about all of my friends, LOVED IT.

Years after, I saw it again and wondered how it was possible that my parents ever let me watch the thing. Although my main memory of watching this was in Phil's kitchen while his dad would make us dinner. So it might be that possibly my parents weren't that keen on me watching a kung-fu show at my age. Which is fair enough!

The show came up in a conversation one night and I subsequently downloaded a season to see if I would see the appeal again. I have to be honest, apart from the nostalgia it brought back, I didn't manage to sit through a whole episode. :) It is awful. It hasn't aged very well, the dubbing is monstrous and it's quite violent.

The new version is animated, and you can guess pretty fast who by; Jamie Hewlett, the man behind the Gorillaz videos. It's pretty neat and really well done.

Well done to the Beeb for giving most 30 year olds and over (and a couple of cult young'ns) a blast from the past.

(Anyone feeling the Nostalgia too?)

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

The lyrics of the theme song may have contained the words "Monkey Magic" ad nauseum. But the show was never called Monkey magic. It was always "Monkey".

Pedantic, yes, but people who called it Monkey magic always annoyed me. :)

AMC said...

I never said the show was called Monkey Magic!
However (and this might have been only in the UK) back then it was widely known as Monkey Magic... :)

To me it was always Monkey Magic.

It doesn't seem to have been translated into any Western language other than English, but if it had made it to the French market, I wonder if "Singe (Magique)" would have had the same appeal!

Anonymous said...

ah Monkey... or Monkey Magic as I will remember it (sod Mr/Mrs anonymous!).. happy days. It brought back the same memories - although when I watched it recently it seemed completely different.

Anonymous said...

Actually Al is right, in the UK (and many other countries) it became widely adopted as Monkey Magic, to the point where it was even listed in the guides as such...
It was only the nerds and comic book ZX spectrum basement geeks that got annoyed at it being called Monkey...

Anonymous said...

Guilty as charged. I'll happily admit to owning a spectrum when Monkey was on. And reading comic books. I was a kid, after all.

I'll also admit to being one of those people who prefers to know the facts, and not just follow the common misconceptions.

Just because everyone around you is wrong, is no excuse for you to be wrong. :)