Sooty (2001-04)

The entire Old Skool Weekend output had a whopping great DOG on it and that looks like an original off air recording.

The full episode is here (looks like its from a DVD?) and it dates from 1989:

His family does come back when the painter appear.......

All this nostalgia has opened my ears to the opening notes of Sooty & Co, which are clearly a nod to the previous Sooty Show theme.

Hardly surprising considering its effectively a continuation in all but name (if I remember correctly the change of location from the house to the shop in Sooty & Co was explained in the narrative - Wiki suggests in the storyline the characters decided for some reason to bugger off to Manchester and sold the house used in the previous show).

Matthew was left the shop in a distant relative's will. So they sold up and moved to Manchester (taking the bedroom and bathroom with them, hoping no one would notice).

Talking of recycling, the Sooty & Co camper van is used in the latest series (repainted), although it's not my favourite vehicle that's featured:

The title of that video is a... thing in itself.

Gee there's a pinnacle of your post political career right there - appearing alongside Sooty, Sweep and Soo.

As far as I am aware of the Thames series is owned by Fremantle Media, and the Granada ones (Sooty & Co, Sooty Heights, and Sooty) by ITV.

The BBC series is of course a no brainer, and the present series Cadell's Ltd.

Wouldn't that mean Cadell doesn't own the Cosgrove Hall series at all? He may just merely have recieved copies as the owner of the franchise.

I'm just sceptical we should take as read that the show was destroyed based on a single line in one interview.

Talking of theme tunes, the slow version of that Sooty Show theme used to close the episodes in 1981 before it was normally replaced by the familiar “Sooty the Magical Bear” instrumental from 1983 onwards. I haven’t managed to find an episode online with that slow theme intact (most uploads from that era are from a VHS compilation with the opening and closing titles cut out).

As I said on the first page even if its 100% God's honest truth the masters fell into a bonfire, Cadell coudn't airbrush the entire show out of existence anyway. Some of it was commercially released, people still have off-air recordings that they've dumped on YouTube and at least one other country took a copy of the show.

I would be surprised if all that was left of it ended up in that bonfire. There are probably no end of other dubs and safety copies floating around elsewhere. Heck if long-lost Dr Who episodes can turn up in all kinds of weird and wonderful places despite apparently not existing in any form whatsoever, its plausible copies of the animated Sooty episodes can too.

There are conflicting articles online, but there is one certainty - FremantleMedia (now Fremantle) sold its kids archive to Boat Rocker Media a few years back.