Introduction

Abstract

The stop-frame animated television programmes made by Smallfilms, Gordon Murray Puppets and Film Fair have remained visible in British popular culture, handed down by grown-up children to their own little ones on DVD, and even leading to re-makes such as Clangers (2015). Svetlana Boym’s notion of modern nostalgia’ (2001) highlights a desire to return to (a fantasy of) a slower pace and a simpler time which is helpful in thinking about the ongoing appeal of the whimsical ‘hand-made’ television of the 1960s and early 1970s. There has been little scholarly attention to this body of programmes, or to stop-frame television animation more widely, despite its ongoing impact on the British children’s television which has followed it. This book aims to address this gap.