Bertha - The 1985 animated series

December 1 2020

Bertha is an animated series for children with stop motion technique. All characters were designed by Ivor Wood, and the 13-episode series was produced by his British company, Woodland Animations, on a factory car of that name.

The series ran from 1985 to 1986 on BBC Television, It was intended as a replacement for The Postman Pat series, until the second series aired in 1996.

A series of five storybooks based on Bertha was published by André Deutsch at the same time as the series aired. They were adapted by Eric Charles and illustrated by Steve Augarde, who was also responsible for the graphics and music on the children's series Bump.

The series was then repeated on GMTV2 in the early 2000s alongside Penny Crayon.

History

The series is set in an industrial area occupied by the Spottiswood & Company factory, a small manufacturing facility that produces a wide range of products ranging from cuckoo clocks to windmill piggy banks.

Each episode focuses on a machine called Bertha that can produce any item requested of it. In each episode, the factory experiences a crisis affecting its daily production schedule, which Bertha invariably resolves with the help of her worker friends.

Production

Bertha was created by Woodland Animations, which also produced the Postman Pat, Charlie Chalk and Gran shows for the BBC. The episodes were written by Eric Charles and Stephen Flewers and designed, produced and directed by Ivor Wood, co-founder of the Woodland company. Roy Kinnear and Sheila Walker voiced the characters and Kinnear narrated. The main title music (as well as some of the other songs) included the singing of Guy Fletcher. The songs "Tracy's Robot Song", "Mrs Tupp" and "Isn't it beautiful?" from the 12-inch vinyl record Bertha feature the voice of Stephanie de Sykes.

Characters

Mr. Willmake - Factory Manager
Miss McClackerty - Mr. Willmake's secretary
Mr. Sprott - Chief Designer
Tracy James - Assistant to Mr. Sprott
Mr. Duncan - Foreman. Sometimes the antagonist in the story, since he considers Bertha an old inefficient machine.
Ted Turner - Chief Machine Operator (showing a variety of influences from veteran TV presenter Bruce Forsyth)
Roy Willing - Assistant Machine Operator (never stated if named after narrator Roy Kinnear)
Mrs. Tupp - The tea lady
Panjit Singh - Forklift operator, often has accidents that are not his fault.
Nell - Packer
Flo - Stacker
Bill and Horace
TOM - Talk Operated Machine, a robot reminiscent of the Star Wars R2-D2 character designed by Tracy and built by Bertha to perform odd jobs in the factory. According to the song TOM the Robot from the episode TOM's New Friend and the Bertha 12 ″ vinyl record, he is said to be Bertha's robot son.
Bertha - The title character, an old factory car that has been modernized in the 50 years she worked in the factory. Help the rest of the Spottiswood & Company factory during each episode in one way or another.
Narrator

Technical data

Created by Eric Charles, Stephen Flewers
With Roy Kinnear (vocals), Sheila Walker (vocals), Narrated by Roy Kinnear
Music Bryan Daly
country of origin UK
Original language English
Number of episodes 13
Producer Ivor Wood
Duration 15 minutes
Original network BBC 1 / BBC 2
Original version April 1, 1985 - June 18, 1986