Fly Tales

The Fly


Fly Tales is a really damned obscure Canadian Animated Series. Really obscure. As in, "it only aired in France and Eastern Europe properly, recently came out on DVD in France and its pages on IMDb and The Other Wiki are anorexic" obscure. And it has different names according to which part of the world it was broadcast in. Yeah, that kind.

The series itself was based on a comic book by Lewis Trondheim called La Mouche, and got adapted to 65 episodes worth of animation in 1999 by Teletoon [1]. Presumably its title was changed for the English translation to not be confused with that movie. The scripts were written by Trondheim and a bunch of other people you've likely never heard of [2], and the series as a whole was directed by Norman LeBlanc (who went on to work on W.I.T.C.H.) and Charlie Sansonetti (fresh off directing Gadget Boy and Heather). All episodes are 5 minutes long, and were broadcast either as standalone 5-minute shorts (Australia) or multiple episodes one after another to add up to a 27-minute block (France).

All episodes of Fly Tales revolve around the titular fly (voiced by Brigitte Lecordier), and they all have a simple formula: said fly goes around, meets other anthropomorphic insects (some of them become Recurring Characters), gets into trouble (sometimes with people too) and then moves on to the next adventure. Hilarity Ensues. All the main characters speak in French-sounding gibberish (the kind that requires 8 writers to achieve), and often the plots are based around the modern world seen from the perspective of insects, taking concepts we don't think much about and transposing them to the insect/animal kingdom, or just parodying various well-worn plots but WITH INSECTS!

And the funny thing is? It's way better than it sounds. Starting from our Captain Oblivious protagonist who often manages to screw up something and then just misses the point completely, the Slapstick and the occasional bouts of surreal and darker humour, the one thing that's clear is that Fly Tales is, above all, funny. And occasionally depressing, scary or fluffy too.

Good luck finding it though. Cartoon Network thought it would be a good idea to throw it at 5:00 AM in the UK, gave it a normal airing for a while only in France, Eastern Europe and Australia, and it only came out on DVD in France in 2002 and Australia in 2004. It also aired during some time in Brazil (and possibly in Latin America).

Tropes used in Fly Tales include:
  • Ambiguous Gender: The fly is voiced by a woman, but is implied in "The Factory" to be male.
  • Bank Run: The fly is sometimes shown as a variation of a Blithe Spirit where the "shaking things up" part occurs due to the fly's own complete obliviousness and obsessive focus on getting something regardless of consequences. For instance, causing a Bank Run for the sake of getting a chocolate coin in "The Chocolate Coin".
  • Bilingual Dialogue: Every character can understand each other's gibberish just fine.
  • Blithe Spirit: The fly is sometimes shown as a variation of this, the variation being that the "shaking things up" part occurs due to the fly's own complete obliviousness and obsessive focus on getting something regardless of consequences (causing a Bank Run for the sake of getting a chocolate coin in "The Chocolate Coin").
  • Captain Oblivious: The fly.
  • The Cat Came Back: "The Fly and the Baby".
  • Christmas Episode: "Oh Christmas Tree".
  • Cloning Blues: The first episode, "The Clones".
  • Determinator: The fly, at least in some episodes like "The Chocolate Coin".
  • Extreme Omnivore: The fly eats almost anything, and a lot of episodes have their plot set in motion or somehow involve finding something to eat ("The Drop of Orange"). The fly's recurring friend, the beetle, is suitably Squicked by the fly's nonchalant eating of pigeon crap in "The Bumblebee", but even that's nothing compared to "The Cosmos and Beyond", where the fly manages to eat a shrunken planet.
  • Flowers for Algernon Syndrome: "The Genius", where the fly realises it was better off and having more fun when its usual stupid self. Uh oh...
  • Getting Crap Past the Radar: "The Factory" uses orange juice as a replacement for alcoholic drinks, and also features a scene with two insects sitting on the factory's smoke stack, huffing fumes through a wire.
  • Gilded Cage: "Guilded Cage", oddly enough.
  • Good Angel, Bad Angel: Parodied with "Angel and Devil", where they're both very annoying and the plot ends with the fly managing to find a way to get rid of them both.
  • It's a Wonderful Plot: Surprisingly enough, the episode "It's a Wonderful Fly" just borrows its title from this.
  • Jekyll and Hyde: "Doctor Fly and Mister Bzzz". It's more of a brainwashing thing, but still.
  • Mood Whiplash: Five minute episodes can sometimes cause this. "Astrofly" in particular whiplashes heavily from the fly accidentally causing another insect to fall off a planet to almost immediately meeting and befriending an alien fly with three eyes.
  • Neat Freak: The antagonist of "Tornado" is implied to be this.
  • Nightmare Retardant: Intentionally invoked in "Fear of the Dark", where the fly is terrified by mundane objects and shadows.
  • No Ending: The show never really ended properly, it just kind of... stopped. "Hair" was the last episode to be broadcast.
  • No Name Given: No character in the show has a name.
  • Recycled in Space: Frequent.
  • Reused Character Design: Happens occasionally with the background characters.
  • Sealed Evil in a Can: "Tornado", arguably.
  • Serious Business: "Soccer Madness".
  • Space Jews: Some episodes recycle certain stereotypes and give them to insects (like the Chinese/Asian stereotypes of "Guilded Cage"), but it's more of a parodic slant than just playing them straight.
  • Speaking Simlish: It's usually quite easy to get the gist of what the characters are saying, thanks to context and body language.
  • Time Travel: "The Cuckoo Clock". The fly and friends accidentally cause God to throw Adam and Eve out of Eden.
  • Too Dumb to Live: The security guards in "Mission Control".
  • Trapped in TV Land: "Showtime".
  1. ↑ yeah, the Angela Anaconda and Total Drama Island guys
  2. ↑ Samuel Kaminka, Sacha Jamet, Laurent Turner (his first writing credit, later wrote for Code Lyoko), Isabelle De Catalogne, Françoise Boubil, Jean Helpert (worked on the 1995 Mr. Men And Little Miss series with Boubil) and Alexandre Reverend (went on to The Mysteries of Alfred Hedgehog)
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