The Sooty Show

A perennial children's favourite in the UK, running from 1952 to 2004 under various titles and settings (The Sooty Show, Sooty & Co., Sooty Heights and finally Sooty), first on The BBC and later on ITV. A new series, entitled Sooty, began in 2011.

Created and presented by Harry Corbett, then by his son Matthew and now by Richard Cadell, the show revolves the adventures (and misadventures) of a group of glove puppets:

• Sooty, a small, naughty but lovable teddy bear who cannot speak above a whisper and is a dab hand with a magic wand (sometimes - when it goes wrong, Hilarity Ensues).
• Sweep, a puppy dog who is dim-witted and naive and talks in an impossible-to-understand squeaking noise.
• Soo, a female panda; the most grown-up of the group (though still not averse to a bit of mischief once in a while) and the only one who can speak.
• Little Cousin Scampi, even naughtier than Sooty; a late addition (1992), he first made a one-off appearance but was brought back as a regular character.

Other characters have included:

• Other puppets like Butch the bulldog and Ramsbottom the snake, who were regulars for a while but eventually disappeared, barring rare guest appearances.
• Connie Creighton, a friend of the 'family' who also co-presented the Sooty stage show with Matthew.
• Mo (from t'market), a regular customer during the Sooty & Co. incarnation, who always ending up selling Matthew something (sometimes conning him) rather than buying anything.

Sooty began as Harry Corbett's 'assistant' in his stage magic show in 1948 and soon became a hit in his own right. The BBC gave Sooty and Harry a slot among their nascent children's programming and the programme ran and ran and ran. Sooty was soon joined by Sweep, later Soo and finally Little Cousin Scampi. Over time, particularly after Matthew took over (having already appeared frequently during his father's tenure), it changed from 'just' a puppet show into a kind of surreal Sitcom about the 'family' of puppets, with Harry/Matthew/Richard as a parental figure.

From quite early on Sooty was a big franchise, spawning toys, books, musical instruments, stage shows, games, educational videos and, of course, copies of the puppets themselves.

Tropes used in The Sooty Show include:

• Amusing Injuries: Sooty didn't just attack Harry and Matthew with a water pistol or a custard pie, he sometimes hit them with a hammer, sawed their fingers or left mousetraps for them to trap their fingers in!
• Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: In one episode of Sooty and Co., Soo challenges the others to make something useful from random bits of wood in one minute. Sooty makes a 'matchbox holder', Sweep makes a 'bone holder', and Scampi makes a 'bone holder holder'.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Butch, the bulldog puppet introduced in the late 1960s, but axed in the 1990s.
• Cursed with Awesome: Harry's magic show, and thus Sooty, would never have come about if he hadn't started going deaf - he could no longer play the piano in his band and so took up conjuring instead. (An operation later restored his hearing.)
• Executive Meddling by The BBC prompted Harry Corbett to take Sooty to ITV.
• Hand Puppet
• Head Bob: Sooty, being The Voiceless, does this when whispering into any of the other character's ears (who then translate for him).
• Inexplicably Identical Individuals: Sweep's many relations once appeared, all indistinguishable save for the colours of their collars and having the same name with different vowels (Swoop, Swap, etc.)
• Long Runners: Until it finally ended in 2004 it was the longest running children's TV show in the world (that's now Blue Peter).
• Nightmare Fuel: An in-universe example in Sooty and Co. -- Scampi tries to scare Sooty and Sweep out of their camper van in order to win a bet, but the other two find his efforts more laughable than scary. That is, until Scampi gets his Boom Box and plays an already creepy song very slowly and backwards, with spectacular results.
• Not This One, That One: In the first episode of the Nineties series Sooty and Co., Sooty and Sweep take delivery of their miniature campervan. Matthew is to get his own vehicle, and is overjoyed to find his own full-sized luxurious campervan...only to find it was actually the bicycle behind it.
• Panda-ing To The Audience: Soo.
• Pantomime - several Christmas episodes involved Sooty and the gang putting one on.
• Parental Bonus: Repeatedly. Prompted complaints from viewers in an episode when Soo pretended to be pregnant.
  • One episode saw the puppets almost getting arrested by the police for "driving a shopping trolley while under the influence of corn flakes".
  • A late episode had a Buddha statue being nicknamed 'Buddhy Jolly' for its beatific expression.
  • There really aren't many more children's TV series that take such advantage of the inevitable parental demographic in this way and others. Particularly in the '90s, where there were Special Guest appearances from people not likely to be commonly known amongst kids (such as comedians like Jack Dee, Paul Merton and Ronnie Corbett) and increasingly frequent Breaking the Fourth Wall Aside Glance jokes from Matthew, such as this one when he was discussing his collection of cassette tapes:

Matthew: I do like Gary Glitter, don't you?

• Phrase Catcher: Sooty's magic words "Izzy Whizzy Let's Get Busy!" (it would be a Catch Phrase, were it not for the fact that he doesn't speak)
• Remake Cameo: In the recent Sooty show with Richard Caddell, a certain Matthew Corbett reappears in one entire episode as a van driver and chocolate thief. Lampshading ensues, with Matthew passing on the torch...or pie-in-the-face rather, to Richard.
• Suddenly Voiced: In one of the animated cartoons. It didn't work very well.
• The Talk: Matthew once tried very inexpertly to give it to Sweep (it didn't help that Sweep seemed to think 'the birds and the bees' was meant literally and there were props handy).
• The Unintelligible: Sweep talks only in high pitched squeaks, and has to be 'translated' by other characters.
  • However, his squeaks are clearly synched to a written script, and some longtime viewers of the show can understand him even without translation.
• The Voiceless: Sooty.