A marmalade-loving bear puppet crashes into 2D London and absolutely nobody questions it.
Season 2 • Episode 26
LatestPaddington's Aunt Lucy comes on visit.
Paddington Bear is a series of British animated shorts based on the Paddington Bear book series by Michael Bond produced by FilmFair. This was the first television series based on the popular children's book Paddington Bear. In the United States it was usually shown on pay television as filler in between programs. Its narrator was actor Michael Hordern. It was one of the few television programmes to combine a puppet show with cartoon - Paddington himself was a puppet, but other characters in the series were depicted as cartoon characters. The series has a very distinctive art style. Paddington himself is a stop-motion animated puppet who moves within a 3-dimensional space and interacts with 2-dimensional animated drawings of the human characters, buildings, etc. The series, along with all other FilmFair productions is currently owned by DHX Media of Canada.
Practical Effects
Seamless puppet-2D hybrid that still holds up weirdly well.
Acting
Michael Hordern's narration voice could soothe a charging rhino.
Production
That handmade FilmFair aesthetic before everything went corporate CGI.
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
FilmFair pioneered this mixed-media technique because full puppet sets were too expensive—necessity birthed the show's entire visual identity.
Paddington's origin as a refugee bear from 'Darkest Peru' quietly mirrored post-war British attitudes toward Commonwealth immigration.
GB
