The Clangers

Mind Screw. British Style!

British stop-motion animated children's show about knitted creatures living on a small hollow planet with dustbin lids covering the craters. The Clangers vaguely resemble mice or pink anteaters, speak in high-pitched whistling noises, and eat soup provided by the friendly Soup Dragon. The name "Clanger" comes from the sound made by the dustbin lids.

A small extract from an episode of this appears in Doctor Who.

One of several series produced by Smallfilms, comprising Oliver Postgate (writer/animator/narrator) and Peter Firmin (character and set design).

Tropes used in The Clangers include:

• British Brevity: Despite running from 1969-1972, only 26 episodes and a special were ever made. On top of that, each episode was only eight minutes long.
• Getting Crap Past the Radar: Because of the Clanger-speak used in every episode, the writers never bothered to censor the scripts because theoretically, nobody would understand them. The BBC still objected to a scene with Major Clanger saying "Sod it, the bloody thing's stuck again!" The scene was unaltered in the final episode. Not only did no one notice, the exact phrase was even used to make talking Clanger toys.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: The Clangers once attempted to go to Earth in a rocket, but changed their minds when they saw, through a telescope, what a horrible place it was. The episode's opening narration described Earth and humans as a pretty rotten bunch of people as well.
  • Specifically, the bit that they saw through their telescope was New York City, which considering the show was British (and considering what New York was actually like in the early Seventies) could be seen as a Take That to the Yanks.
• Small Reference Pools: A Real Life example. "Clangers" managed to come up as a suggestion for a game of Film & Theater Styles on the show Whose Line Is It Anyway?, despite host Clive Anderson having no idea what it was. Players Josie Lawrence and Paul Merton successfully managed to mimic the show; Clive still had no idea what they were going on about.
• Starfish Language: The show features no dialog aside from a narrator that tries (in vain) to explain to the audience what's happening. The Clangers only speak in their distinctive high-pitched whistles.
• Subverted Kids Show: The nature of the Clangers dialog allowed for it to be easily subverted like this.