Gooopheeeeeeerrrrrsss!

Gophers - Episode 1. Moving day (part 1 of 3)



Very, very cult Children's show from 1990, shown and produced by Channel 4 on weekend Sunday mornings, created by Mark Mason. Think "Dinosaurs", people dressed in animatronic human/gopher cross-breeds, wearing sensible clothes. The first 3 episodes are on Youtube, but episodes 4 and 5 are in Dutch. There were 13 episodes altogether and only 1 series, sadly.

This focused on an American family of Gophers moving a new neck of the woods, Sycamore Heights, where funnily enough, they all speak in a British accent, apart from the Merv Wombat character. The gophers, comprising of father Chuck Gopher family(played by American Lou Marsh, who appeared as "Arnie" in the UK sitcom "My Hero), mother Lillian Gopher, son Junior Gopher and baby son Chiplet Gopher. They live next door to family of rabbits called the Burrows. The father, Arthur Burrows, is an obsessive compulsive when it comes to gardening. Wife Beatrix Burrows and daughter Flora Burrows complete the family. The villain of the set piece have their HQ somewhere underground, a fox by the name of Dr. Wince and his daft sidekick Sly, a tiny Crocodile/Alligator. Wince wants to build a road through the 2 families plot of land and home!

There's also some off-beat comedy from other characters including the 2 crows up by the nest, Frankie and Ollie, a pack of well-groomed talking vegetables from Arthur Burrows shed. They are Charlotte Cabbage, Percy Cabbage, Knowitall Carrot, Weepy Cauliflower and Barry Pumpkin. Then you have the Shakespearean Tree, and The Cockroaches, who appear in those bloody dutch-speaking episodes called Nacho, Mimi - A waitress and Lupe - The Bartender. They live in one of the Gophers walls in the Kitchen.

It was a great little obscure show, and hopefully somebody will upload the last episode, which I vaguely remember. Other noteworthy voice actors from the show was Arthur Burrows' Francis Wright, who voiced The Psammead in the CBBC series "Five Children and It".