Explore TV Series

Thomas & Friends is a British children's television series, which had its first broadcast on the ITV network on 4 September 1984. It is based on The Railway Series of books by the Reverend Wilbert Awdry and his son, Christopher Awdry. These books deal with the adventures of a group of anthropomorphised locomotives and road vehicles who live on the fictional Island of Sodor. The books were based on stories Wilbert told to entertain his son, Christopher during his recovery from measles. From Series one to four, many of the stories are based on events from Awdry's personal experience.

Follow the adventures of fireman Sam and his colleagues as they protect the citizens of the Welsh town of Pontypandy. Whenever the alarm sounds, brave Sam and his co-workers can be counted on to jump into a fire engine, hop onto a helicopter, or even launch an inflatable lifeboat to battle blazes, mount rescue missions, or provide medical attention to those in need.

Playful penguin Pingu lives with his family in Antarctica, where he often finds himself caught up in mischievous high jinks with his pal Robby.

Count Duckula is a vegetarian vampire duck, coming into the world as an accident. Unlike his family and ancestors, he has no bloodlust, as when he was reincarnated, blood was omitted and replaced with ketchup.

Heathcliff knows he is the best cat around! Never have we seen such self-confidence topped off with a heavy dose of vanity, cunning, ruthlessness, and a mischievous love of gags. He cruises and struts down the street and watch out any person, cat, or dog who gets in his way! Although he may terrorize the neighborhood, let an outsider try to push anyone around and he is a veritable tiger of defense. On the other side of town are The Catillac Cats, which typically revolve around leader Riff-Raff's get-rich-quick schemes or searches for food.

Pat and his black-and-white cat Jess deliver the mail in Greendale.

Ulysses and his crew struggle against the divine entities that rule the universe, the ancient gods from Greek mythology.

Lucky Luke, with his horse Double Six, travels the Old West to right wrongs and bring evildoers (usually his traditional enemies the Dalton Brothers) to justice. "The man who shoots faster than his shadow."

Danger Mouse, the world's greatest secret agent, and his side-kick Penfold work to foil the evil schemes of Baron Greenback.

Created by French surrealist artist Roland Topor and director Henri Xhonneux, Telecat is a news show parody hosted by a tomcat named Groucha (who always had his arm in plaster) and an ostrich named Lola. It featured a variety of sentient objects and revolved around the idea that the real-life elementary particles known as gluons were “the souls of objects”.

"Fredy" is a black ant who solves his problems in every episode with his intelligence and the help of his friends.

SuperTed is a Welsh fictional anthropomorphic bear character created by Mike Young. Originally created by Young as a series of stories to help his son overcome his fear of the dark, SuperTed became a popular series of books and led to an animated series produced from 1982 to 1986.

France, 17th century, under the reign of Louis XIII. Dogtanian is an impetuous and innocent peasant from Gascony, as well as a skilled swordsman, who travels to Paris with the purpose of making his dream come true: to join the Corps of Muskehounds of the Royal Guard.

The Lightning League drives white and silver vehicles with assorted weaponry, and are led by a teenager named Jayce. The villains are organic green vegetable-based creatures called the Monster Minds, who tend to take the shape of black and green vehicles. They travel via large green organic vines which can grow in and across interstellar space, and sprout seeds that rapidly grow into further Monster Minds. They are led by Saw Boss.

Pumuckl is a Kobold from a German radio play series for children. He is a descendant of the Klabautermänner. He is invisible to people around him except for the master carpenter Eder with whom Pumuckl lives. Pumuckl was invented by Ellis Kaut for a radio play series of the Bavarian Radio in 1961. Later on it was turned into a very successful TV series. Three movies and a musical also deal with the adventures of the little kobold. Pumuckl is one of the most popular characters in children's entertainment in Germany and several generations have now grown up with the cheeky but funny little Kobold.

Attention please! Are you ready for an adventurous tour through the human body? With a lot of humour, our physical appearance is being introduced from head to toe along cells and organs in an educational way. The heart, blood, nerves and kidneys, each single one is a miracle which renders life possible.

Allsorts is British children's television series that was produced by Granada Television for nine series, which aired from 8 January 1986 to 12 December 1995 on CITV.

A young girl embarks on a series of misadventures, causing her friends and teachers to be worrisome. Based on the children's books by Ludwig Bemelmans.

Bodger and Badger is a BBC children's comedy programme which was first broadcast in 1989. It starred Andy Cunningham as Simon Bodger, who had a badly behaved companion, a talking badger with a love for mashed potatoes.

The ‘80s animated series about masked crime fighters, the Mobile Armored Strike Kommand, out to stop the chaotic crime syndicate known as V.E.N.O.M.

Children's Ward is a British children's television drama series produced by Granada Television and broadcast on the ITV network as part of its Children's ITV strand on weekday afternoons. The programme was set – as the title suggests – in Ward B1, the children's ward of the fictitious South Park Hospital, and told the stories of the young patients and the staff present there. Aimed at older children and teenagers, Children's Ward was a long-lived series for a children's drama, starting life in 1988 as a contribution to the Dramarama anthology strand, "Blackbird Singing In The Dead of Night", then first broadcast as a series 1989 and running from then until 2000. The series was conceived by Granada staff writers Paul Abbott and Kay Mellor, both of whom went on to enjoy successful careers as award-winning writers of adult television drama. At the time, they were both working on the soap opera Coronation Street, and had recently collaborated on a script for Dramarama. Abbott, who had been through a troubled childhood himself, had initially wanted to set the series in a children's care home rather than a hospital, but this was vetoed by Granada executives. During the course of its run, however, Children's Ward won many plaudits for covering difficult issues such as cancer, alcoholism, drug addiction and child abuse in a sensitive manner. The programme won many awards, including in 1996 a BAFTA Children's Award for Best Drama, won by an episode in which a serial killer lures children to him via the internet and is – highly unusually for children's television – not eventually caught.

The Really Wild Show was a long-running British television show about wildlife, broadcast by the BBC as part of their CBBC service to children. It also runs on Animal Planet in the US. The show was broadcast continuously since 21 January 1986. In April 2006 the BBC announced that the show would be axed that summer, and as such the last ever episode was shown in April 2006, giving the show a run of 20 years.

Scientific whizkid Ken Wilberforce thought a robot would be a help around the house, so he built Metal Mickey. But someone interferes - and deep within Mickey's electronic innards, something stirs...

Join Rod, Jane and Freddy from 'Rainbow' as they set off on their own adventures. Sometimes they may be putting on a mini variety show at a theatre, other times they may leap through the pages of a story book trying to get Mary Mary home. It's always musical and mostly educational.

Woof! is a British children's television series produced by Central Independent Television about the adventures of a boy who shapeshifts into a dog. It was based on the book by Allan Ahlberg. It was directed by David Cobham. It was written by Richard Fegen and Andrew Norriss.

The Littles is an animated television series based on The Littles characters in a series of children's novels by American author John Peterson, the first of which was published in 1967. This cartoon was produced by a French/American/Canadian animation studio, DIC Entertainment, and as standard practice for TV cartoons of the period, the animation production was outsourced overseas to the Japanese studio TMS Entertainment. It was post-produced by a Canadian Animation studio, Animation City Editorial Services.

A Spanish animated television series based on the children's book The Secret Book of Gnomes, by the Dutch author Wil Huygen and illustrator Rien Poortvliet.

Pimpa, a white female dog with red dots all over her body, who lives with her owner/father figure Armando, a plump moustached man who treats her like a daughter. Every day Pimpa goes through new adventures wheter it's in her house's surroundings or all over the world, or even in space, meeting old friends and making newers.

Willy Fog is a British millionaire who bets that he will be able to go around the world in only eighty days.

The Wind in the Willows is a TV series that was originally broadcast between 1984 and 1987, based on characters from Kenneth Grahame's classic story The Wind in the Willows and following the 1983 film The Wind in the Willows. It was made by animation company Cosgrove Hall for Thames Television and shown on the ITV network. An hour-long feature, A Tale Of Two Toads, was broadcast in 1988, and a fifth season of 13 episodes was shown in 1989 under the title Oh! Mr Toad in some countries, whilst retaining the title The Wind in the Willows in others.

On the show, the eponymous main character resides at the Newtown Zoo, with friends Otto and Stella. The adventures Benjamin gets involved in often require slipping into various roles, learning new jobs, or discovering new and distant places.

Rainbow Brite is an American children's animated TV series that aired in Syndication from 1984 to 1985.

An original program that in the mid-80s brought the world of art and literature closer to children and young people. Its protagonist and presenter was Flip, a girl who lived on her white planet with the only company of her invisible friend Muc.

In war-torn 11th century Spain, Ruy de Vivar, just a boy, dreams of becoming an invincible warrior.

Doctor Snuggles is an animated television series created by Jeffrey O'Kelly based on original artwork by Nick Price, about a friendly and optimistic inventor named Doctor Snuggles who has unusual adventures with his friends. The show featured fantastical scenarios which usually involved Doctor Snuggles inventing something outlandish such as a robot helper or diamond-making machine, and had a variety of supporting characters who were mostly anthropomorphic animals.

Let's Pretend was a 1980s children's television series aimed at preschool ages. It was shown across the ITV Network at 12.10 on Tuesdays, then later Mondays, replacing the popular Pipkins which had been cancelled at the end of 1981. Like its predecessor, each edition was fifteen minutes long, and the programme was produced using many of Pipkins' personnel such as puppeteer Nigel Plaskitt and producer Michael Jeans. Each week the presenters would find a number of ordinary household items and contrive to produce a short story featuring them all. The first programme, "The Story Of The Broken Puppet", was shown on Tuesday 5 January 1982 by Central Television. The show aired weekly until 1988. The show's original opening titles featured items moving along a conveyor belt into the mouth of a large plastic whale, and later a puppet caterpillar moving along the screen.

Marmalade Atkins is the naughtiest girl in the world. In fact, she's so wicked that her parents and social worker decide that the only thing to do with her is to blast her into space. But, knowing Marmalade, it's not going to be that easy!

Victor is a big white bear who wears a hat and tie, and Maria is the girl who plays with him. And that's it. Together, these two share a lot of fun and games, just like friends do. On occasion, they are joined by Victor's cousin Otto, who is a brown bear, and Matilda, who is Maria's human friend.

Jonny Briggs centers on the exploits of a young boy, the eponymous hero, his pet dog, Razzle, and his eccentric family members.

Tricky Business was a British children's sitcom which ran for three series from 1989 to 1991. It featured Anthony Davis, Sally Ann Marsh and Una Stubbs in the first series, David Wood, Anthony Davis, Patsy Palmer, a puppet rabbit called Crabtree in the second and Bernie Clifton and Leslie Schofield in the third. Paul Zenon was the longest-surviving cast member, playing Tricky Micky in series two and himself in series three, as well as being the magic consultant for both those series.

TUGS is a British children's television series first broadcast in 1988. It was created by the producers of Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends, Robert D. Cardona and David Mitton. The series dealt with the adventures of two anthropomorphized tugboat fleets, the Star Fleet and the Z-Stacks, who compete against each other in the fictional Bigg City Port. The series was set in the Roaring Twenties, and was produced by TUGS Ltd., for TVS and Clearwater Features Ltd. Music was composed by Junior Campbell and Mike O'Donnell, who also wrote the music for Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends. Due to the bankruptcy of production company TVS, the series did not continue production past 13 episodes. Following the initial airing of the series throughout 1988, television rights were sold to an unknown party, while all models and sets from the series sold to Britt Allcroft. Modified set props and tugboat models were used in Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends from 1991 onwards.

A diaper-wearing toddler with a mohawk named Maxwell "Fantastic Max" Young has adventures in outer space with two of his toys: FX, a pull string alien doll from a planet called Twinkle-Twinkle, and A.B. Sitter, a C-3PO-like android made of blocks.

A silhouette animation anthology TV series conceived, written and directed by Michel Ocelot and realised at La Fabrique, consisting of short fantastical stories performed by the same animated "actors." A critical success but commercial failure at the time, no further episodes were commissioned beyond the initial 8, but, following the success of Ocelot's Kirikou and the Sorceress, 6 were edited into the 2000 feature Princes and Princesses, in which form they finally saw wide exposure and acclaim both in France and internationally; a further episode was included in a home release of short works in 2008, but one remains unavailable for public consumption.

Animated parody of famous superheroes about a young boy called Eric, who found out that when he eats bananas he transforms into the super strong Bananaman!

Drama about the lives of a team of bicycle couriers in London.

Creepy Crawlies was a stop motion animation series created by Cosgrove Hall. The series consisted of 52 ten-minute episodes, which were broadcast on Children's ITV between 1987 and 1989. All episodes were written by Peter Reeves and directed by Franc Vose and Brian Little; narration and character voices were provided by Paul Nicholas. The series was based upon the daily goings-on of a group of common invertebrate creatures that lived at the bottom of a garden around an old sundial. And so another bright new day dawns upon the home of the Creepy Crawlies, Mr Harrison the snooty snail, Suppose the lowly red-nosed worm, Ariadne the spider, the irksome woodlouse-come-pill-bug called Anorak, meek Ladybird, Lambeth the brawny-but-brainless beetle and Ancient the aged caterpillar dwell right down at the bottom of the garden, near the shed, on and around an old broken sundial. Classic Cosgrove Hall stop-motion animation.

The Trap Door is a claymation-style animated television series, originally shown in the United Kingdom in 1984. The plot revolves around both the daily lives and the misadventures of a group of monsters living in a castle. Although the emphasis was on humour and the show was marketed as a children's programme but also for family entertainment, the show drew much from the genres of horror and dark fantasy. The show has since become a cult favourite and remains one of the most widely recognised kids' shows of the 1980s. Digital children's channel Pop started rerunning the show in 2010.

Patrick Troughton stars in this children's fantasy tale with dark undertones. When a young schoolboy is given a box for safekeeping by a mysterious magician, little does he know the wondrous things he’ll soon discover.

Simon is a very sensible young schoolboy, who has a friend who is a real witch. She is very silly, and a huge showoff.

It's a British/German cartoon with 51 episodes of 5 minutes. It's about a blue raven called Ric, an optimist who tries things out for fun.

Jimbo and the Jet Set is a British animated cartoon series broadcast in the 1980s, featuring the adventures of the eponymous Jimbo, a talking aeroplane. Created by Maddocks Cartoon Productions, it originally ran for 25 episodes between 1985 and 1986. The premise of the cartoon is that Jimbo was originally intended to be a Jumbo Jet, but his designer could not tell the difference between inches and centimetres, resulting in his diminutive size. If Jimbo's designer switched the imperial measurements of the Boeing 747 for metric, the result would have been an aircraft with a fuselage length of 91 ft; this would make Jimbo roughly the length of an early-series Boeing 737. The television series features various talking airport-type ground vehicles: Tommy Tow-Truck, Claude Catering, Amanda Baggage, Phil the Fuel Truck, Sammy Steps and Harry Helicopter. Other plane characters appear from time to time, such as Old Timer, a Vickers Wellington bomber who gets into the story while flying to or from an airshow. The story is based at a fictional "London Airport", under the command of an irate controller who frequently ends episodes screaming "I want words with you, Jimbo!".

Running Scared is a British television children's drama serial produced by the BBC and transmitted on BBC 1 in 1986, based on the Bernard Ashley novel and is set in Woolwich with the Woolwich Ferry featuring in a key scene. A gritty series, Running Scared deals with a teenage girl, Paula, whose life is put at risk when she uncovers evidence that could put a local criminal gang leader behind bars. The series is notable for its use of the then recently released Kate Bush pop song Running Up That Hill as its main theme tune.

Dr. Fool, an explorer, reveals to the world the existence of the last koala in the forest of Rivermint, a little town in Australia. As soon as the news of the discovery is spread, Trombonetti, master of a circus, and his assistant Paolo, decide to go to Rivermint to capture the koala for their circus. At the same time, Rebeca, her grandfather and their personal hunter Iván, want to capture Mofli and make it a trophy. But Corina and Bruno will fight against all to help their dear friend of the forest.

When the door to the old shoe repair shop is closed for the night, the magical domain of the Shoe People springs to life. The Shoe People take children on fantastic adventures and let them explore the wonderful world at their feet.

The Family-Ness is a British cartoon series produced in 1983. It was first broadcast on BBC One from 5 October 1984 to 5 April 1985, and it was created by Peter Maddocks of Maddocks Cartoon Productions. Maddocks later went on to produce Penny Crayon and Jimbo and the Jet Set in a similar style. Family-Ness was about the adventures of a family of Loch Ness Monsters and the MacTout family, particularly siblings Elspeth and Angus. The 'Nessies' could be called from the loch by the two children by means of their "thistle whistles". The series was followed with a large collection of merchandising including annuals, story books, character models and even a record. The single "You'll Never Find a Nessie in the Zoo" was written by Roger and Gavin Greenaway, but never made it into the Top 40.