Does anyone know this TV show?

Hello

I have been trying to remember and find out about a TV show I watched a long time ago for many years, and wondered if anyone here might know/remember it or be able to suggest other specialist forums that might know something.

This is, I think, a children's TV show that I saw in the 90s but could be a rerun of something from the 80s or 70s.

The thing I remember clearest is the baddie in the show was trying to kidnap other characters and put them into a large machine that drained their essence(?) and turned them into small toy versions of themselves. Their essence was something that the baddie gathered together as some sort of gloopy fluid that they were going to drink to make themselves stronger. Maybe the big baddie wasn't yet physical and was relying on a couple of henchmen to do the abducting?

It was live action, not a cartoon. It was set in a make-believe world. I think I remember one of the characters was a rat or a mouse and he was quite a large man in costume with face paints on, but it's quite a hazy memory there. I think similarly there was also a cat character. The other characters were maybe like a scarecrow or made-up things rather than all people dressed as animals.

It's all a little hazy but it's been bothering me for years that I can't remember it. Any help would be greatly received!

I guess if I don't mind out I'll just write a book of it and wait for someone to sue me for copyright ?

You might do better to post your query at somewhere like https://www.moviemistakes.com/generalquestions where you can quite often post a tiny little tidbit of something and somebody else recognises it.

That being said if you saw this in the 1990s it's quite unlikely to be a repeat from the 70s if it was on the mainstream children's services at the time, which would have been Children's BBC, Children's ITV and (from September 1993 onwards) NIckelodeon (and shortly after that Cartoon Network). TCC was floating around as well but realistically by 1993 its target audience got younger but anyway...

It sounds a lot like Through The Dragon's Eye to me, which was technically a schools programme rather than a kids' one (being a Look And Read story).

Actually that makes more sense if it was potentially a rerun:
http://www.broadcastforschools.co.uk/site/Look_and_Read/Through_the_Dragon%27s_Eye

That series dates from 1989 but was aired in 1991, 1993 and 1997 (and later 2000, and then a few times as part of Class TV on the CBBC Channel).

I saw it when I was at primary school, which would have been either the 1991 or 1993 re-run. Possibly the latter though that seems later than I remember... but 1991 seems too early.

Yeah I think I was watching them in Primary School around 1991 1993 with also this classic



and of course Earth Warp

We only saw the first episode or two of Earth Warp, then the teacher told us it was "rotting our brains" and we never saw the rest.

I do remember seeing LRTV as well, suprised the teacher didn't think that was rotting our brains too. All the later L&Rs were made after I'd passed the age they were meant for.

In terms of older L&Rs, I remember us seeing Geordie Racer, and we may have seen Sky Hunter II as well, but I'm not 100% about that one, or if I just saw it on the CBBC channel years later.

Talking of 90s schools programmes, can anyone else remember one which had a woman who went round various countries with an underground drilling machine? I half wondered if I'd imagined it until my boyfriend suddenly bought it up a couple of weeks ago (he also thought nobody but him remembered it), but neither of us can remember what it was called.

I think I know which series you are talking about. I think it was a unit of BBC Zig Zag programmes from the early 90s called Tales from Europe.
It was quite a well known old Scottish TV actress (possibly known as 'auntie' in this?). She used to zoom at high speed in the rocket thing across Europe to get to the destination they were focusing on in that episode. And I think she had a teddy bear with her, who I think had a human name, and she used to talk to it.
I can't remember the actress name, but I think she would have been in adult stuff around that time too. I can picture her face, which makes it more frustrating that I don't know her name! Would love to know her name!! She probably passed away a while ago.

And back to the Look and Reads, I remember all of the ones you mentioned. My favourites were Geordie Racer, Spywatch and Earth Warp.

LRTV was good too, but I can't seem to find any clips of it online 😔
It was a parody of GMTV style breakfast channel.

Searching on YouTube finds this, the map at the start showing the drilling machine fits what I remember, though there's no footage of the woman or the inside of the machine (though you can hear her narrating), so maybe this is a cut down repeat from a later year?

It was Denise Coffey, who's still going strong. I remember it well, she would travel around in her "Hypersonic Mole", and she was very proud of its "Hypersonic Speeeeed!".

Hypersonic Mole- that's it!

Bit of research finds a listing on Getty Images for anyone interested in buying it:
https://www.gettyimages.ca/detail/video/prog-in-schools-series-molly-oversleeps-in-her-hypersonic-news-footage/BBC_ESBP128H

First broadcast in 1992 according to that.

I immediately thought that, but Rhodey the mouse was a full costume rather than face painted, and the rest of the plot doesn't really match up.