New Gruesome Kid No 11

Ep 11 THE KINGDOM OF WAX: 

Nathaniel’s parents have created a wax museum called The Kingdom of Wax containing lots of contemporary celebrities

New Gruesome Kid No 10

Ep 10 THE LONG FACE: 

Petty is a sulker; a petulant princess with a long face who is jealous of anything anyone else has got. 

Royal Wedding Sensation

Princess Britney turns down Prince Spencer in "The Ugly Prince" on NickToons this week

New Gruesome Kid No 9

Ep 9 THE DRAGON MOTH: 

Josiah Reeks refuses to obey signs, which is a problem at home, because his father is a sign writer and uses them to set house rules. The sign on the disused lighthouse - HERE BE DRAGONS - draws Josiah like a moth to a flame.

New Gruesome Kid No 8

Ep 8 LITTLE ANGEL: 

Lisa Toadley is horrible to her little brother, Wycombe, but never lets her parents see her doing it. As a result, her parents think she is God’s gift and indulge her passion for Musical Statues. In fact she has ambitions to become the World Champion Musical Statuer.

Fearsome Tales for Fiendish Kids by Jamie Rix

Here's the third collection of Grizzly Tales by Jamie Rix with the TV tie in cover by Sara and Simon Bor

  There is a story for you to read on The Jamie Rix website HERE  The Dumb Clucks was originally from Fiendish Tales for Fearsome Kids, renamed as "The Dumb Klutzes" in the 6th series of Grizzly Tales.

Thursday on Nickelodeon

Broken down Cottage, CatBurglar, Mr Peeler's Butterflies, The Giant who grew too big for his boots, all on Nickelodeon for UK and Ireland tonight at 10pm

New Gruesome Kid No 7

Ep 7 MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE: 

Popering Partridge is embarrassed to be seen in public with his parents, because his father has an unusual job. Every year he grows a pear inside a bottle then travels to markets asking people to guess how it got there.

Win Grizzly Tales Books

The Primary Times has a competition to win Grizzly Tales books http://www.primarytimes.net/competitions_national_grizzly_tales_book.php

New Gruesome Kid No 6

Ep 6 CAT’S EYES: 

Cat Clore bullies her seven brothers and sisters into being in her gang, the Daredevils. The aim of the gang is to collects subs for Cat to spend and in return she makes them do dangerous things. Her brothers and sisters are too scared to say no.

Nigel Planer on Alan Titchmarsh still on ITV player

The Alan Titchmarsh show featuring Nigel Planer talking Grizzly Tales is still on the ITV Payer. He features as the final guest.

Join Alan every weekday at 3pm

This week, Alan is joined by Frank Bruno, Sam Branson, Ronan Keating, Stefanie Powers, Aled Jones, Jenni Murray, Nigel Planer and Mary Nightingale. There's also music from Clare Maguire, classical vocal quartet Blake and the Band of the Welsh Guards. In the kitchen Ainsley Harriott and Rosemary Shrager are cooking up Royal wedding party snacksIf that weren't already plenty to keep him occupied, he'll also be talking to Paula Wilcox, Linda Barker, Julia Bradbury, Janice Dickinson, Zoe Wanamaker and Chris Hollins. Join him every weekday at 3pm.


See it now on

ITV Player 

NEW TO NICKTOONS

Details of the first run on NickToons

NEW TO NICKTOONS - GRIZZLY TALES

From Monday 2nd until Tuesday 10th May every weekday at 8.30am and 6pm The multi-award winning cartoon animation series Grizzly Tales is guaranteed to scare even the naughtiest children into submission! Based on the hit series of books written by Jamie Rix and narrated by Nigel Planer (The Magic Roundabout; The Young Ones), Grizzly Tales will grab young imaginations with stories of misbehaving children who get their comeuppance. New episode Tinklebell features Gilbert, a boy who refuses to eat the food on his plate. He offers a deal to his long suffering parents; if they eat the food on their plates for a week he will do the same for the rest of his life. There is of course a catch. Gilbert has to do the cooking and so he prepares revolting food, unfit for human consumption! In The Flat Pack Kid, Humpty Egg is forever taking things apart to see how they work but never bothers to put them back together again, which means the Egg household is in permanent chaos. After several warnings, Humpty is flat-packed by DIY Dave who has a penchant for power tools. Unfortunately, he forgets to put instructions in the pack so Humpty’s parents can’t put their son back together again!

New Gruesome Kid No 5

Ep 5 THE RISE AND FALL OF THE EVIL GUFF: 

Bart Thumper refuses to eat vegetables. When his parents finally trick him into eating cauliflower he discovers that he has the smelliest farts in the world and uses them to pay back his poor parents. 

Radio Grizzly is FUN

The audio readings of the Grizzly Tales books are to be broadcast. See review of the CDs http://www.booksandotherthoughts.com/2011/03/grizzly-tales-nasty-little-beasts.html

Get ready for Grizzly Tales, joining FUN radio every afternoon (Monday to Sunday) at 4.30pm.

In these stories, children are committing acts of grizzliness, but will they get their comeuppance? Titles include ‘The Grub-A-Blub-Blub’, ‘Monty’s Python’ and ‘The Lobster’s Scream’.

Grizzly Tales are written by Jamie Rix, performed by Rupert Degas and published by Orion Audiobooks.

Fun Radio is available on DAB in London and the South east

Grizzly Tales Competition

http://www.familyrapp.com/Results/archive_results_details.asp?ArticleID=4432

New Gruesome Kid No 4

Ep 4 HEAR NO WEEVIL SEE NO WEEVIL: 

Broccoli Brassica resorts to Genetic Modification to grow the largest fruit and vegetables in Sleepy Backwater on the Mould.

New Gruesome Kid No 3

Ep 3  THE UGLY PRINCE: Spoilt, tantrum-prone Prince Spencer and his childhood sweetheart Princess Britney are pledged in marriage

But when Britney calls off the engagement because Spencer is so ugly, Spencer undertakes an ugly revenge.

New Gruesome Kid No 2

Ep 2 Sick to Death

Victoria is out of control. To get what she wants she screams and screams till she’s sick. Unfortunately her mother cannot bear to clean the sick up, leaving it for her husband when he comes home at the weekend.

New Gruesome Kid No 1

Ep1  Tinkelbell


Gilbert.is a boy who refuses to eat what is on his plate. He offers a deal to his long suffering parents. If they eat what is on their plates for a week he will eat what is on his plate for the rest of his life - there is a catch however; he has to do the cooking.

Gilbert is one of the guests at the Hot-Hell Darkness. Catch new gruesome kids on this page every day this week.

The Night Night Porter Moves in

The Night Night Porter narrates the new series of Grizzly Tales,  and has not only taken my job, but my twiter account as well,  follow him if you dare @UncleGriz

Series 7 Episode Guide

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Here are the 13 episodes which make up the 7th series of Grizzly Tales


NickToons will air series 8 later on in 2011

1 Tinklebell

2 Sick To Death

3 The Ugly Prince

4 Hear No Weevil See No Weevil

5 The Rise and Fall of The Evil Guff

6 Cat’s Eyes

7 Message in a Bottle

8 Little Angel

9 The Dragon Moth

10 The Long Face

11 Kingdom of Wax

12 The Spelling Bee

13 The Flat Pack Kid

Toonhound

Animation website Toonhound has a lovely item about New Grizzly Tales, as well as pages of great stuff about British Animation, including the original Grzzly Tales for Gruesome Kids,  the Jamie Rix scripted Willo The Wisp  and Honeycomb Animation's Wolves, Witches & Giants, Tube Mice, and Binka,

favourite Grizzly Tales

Jamie's Favourite

My favourite episode of Grizzly Tales is A Spelling Bee, because the image of a child sitting up in bed with a swarm of bees buzzing in and out of her ears, mouth and nose, using her head as a hive, is the most chilling I have ever created

Jamie Rix  Writer, Co Director / Producer

Sara's Favourite

The Barber of Civil, because it's dark and was the first storyboard I did. 

Simon's Favourite

For me, my favourite tale from the original series was "The Revenge of the Bogeyman".  It's not the most gruesome tale by any means, but it was the first really yucky one. The new series ups the yuck factor big time, with vomit and farts, but we got there  in the first with snot  and it won us Best Children's Series AND more importantly, Children's Choice at the British Animation Awards.

Simon Bor   Co Director / Producer

Gareth's Favourite

My favourite episode is also The Revenge Of The Bogeyman. Firstly because I storyboarded it and it won two British Animation Awards - Woo Hoo! Secondly because the methods we used to create the 'interior' shots were great fun to do and worked really nicely and lastly because everyone at some stage in there life has picked it, licked it, rolled and flicked it!...Gruesome!

Tom's Favourite

Trying to pick which is my favourite episode Grizzly Tales, is like asking an dastardly scientist which of his monstrous creations is he likes best. It would have to choose Sick To Death from the new series, because, although I’ve always been a fan, this was my first time working on the show and therefore a little bit special.

What makes this episode so memorable, is the sheer ickiness of it.  

(More from Tom after transmission as there's a spoiler here) Uncle Grizzly 

Alan Titchmarsh's Grizzly Tales ....... with Nigel Planer

The Countdown to New Grizzly Tales continues. Nigel Planer, the voice of Grizzly Tales will be on TheAlanTitchmarshShow 27^th April at 3pm on ITV1 to talk about all things Grizzly.

Not the ten o'clock news

Every night @ 10 on Nickelodeon in the UK and Ireland. Grizzly Tales.

Anthony's Grizzly Tales

Anthony Utley - Head of Sales - Carlton International - Series 1

 

We had had four successful years doing Wolves Witches & Giants, and the same team had joined up with Jamie Rix to make the pilot for Grizzly Tales.

 

It was presented at Cartoon Forum in Syros and we already knew we had ITV and German co producer Ravensburger on board. It was the sale to TF1 sealed at Cartoon that finalised things. Shortly after Carlton had given the green light to Grizzly, I left for BBC Worldwide, leaving others to pick up the can if it all went horribly wrong. But seven series on, it seems to have done OK.

Jamie's Big Toe

Jamie's profile is on the BBC's BIG TOE page. Before warping into Radio 4 extra, BBC7's Big Toe repeated the original Grizzly Tales Radio series .

The Gruesome Creatives

Five people have been involved in the Grizzly Tales TV series since the beginning.  Author Jamie Rix, Actor Nigel Planer, Animation Producers Sara & Simon Bor and Musician Ed Welch. Here are their stories.

Jamie Rix, Writer, co director and co producer

GRIZZLY TALES – “How it started” by Jamie Rix

Anyone remember the book Struwwelpeter?  My mum had tried to get me to stop sucking my thumb for years. She’d tried Bitter Aloes, getting me to feed horses with my thumb strapped to a carrot and slamming my thumb in a car door. Anyway, nothing worked. So she bought me Struwwelpeter and made me read a story called The Story of Little Suck A Thumb. It was about a boy who would not stop sucking his thumb and had both his thumbs cut off by the Long Red-Legged Scissor Man. That story was brilliant. I had nightmares for weeks. When I hear that story now I can still feel the scissors cutting through my thumb bones. And I fell in love with the pictures. They were so matter of fact about death. And there was so much blood!

Ben Rix inspiration for The Spaghetti Man

Anyway, wind forward twenty years, and the first story that I ever wrote was called The Spaghetti Man. My eldest son, Ben, was just four and refused to eat whatever had been cooked for dinner. On holiday in France, the family (that’s me, Helen, Ben and Jack) drove past a shop that sold pasta. I stopped the car and looked at Ben. "If you don't eat your food tonight," I said to him, straight-faced, "I shall bring you back to the pasta factory tonight and the spaghetti man will turn you into lasagne. Then we'll eat you tomorrow for lunch." That night, Ben ate everything on his plate. Nothing I had done before prepared me for the thrill of watching children believe my stories. I never knew lying could be so much fun!

I wrote The Spaghetti Man up and sent it off to 22 publishers. One replied – the very lovely Pam Royds from Andre Deutsch – you always fall in love with your first editor. She didn’t exactly say “OK I’ll commission a book,” but she did say “write a load more stories like these and I’ll tell you when to stop.” I wrote another about a barber who cut out cheeky little children’s tongues called The Barber of Civil, and another called Dr Moribundus about a girl who skips school, and which shares a plotline with the second Hannibal Lecter film (NB – My story was first!). Dr Moribundus was based on me. Whenever I wanted to get off school, I told my mum I was sick and, lying in bed looking weak and feeble, I begged her for a cup of tea. When it arrived, I stirred the thermometer in the hot tea until the mercury was nicely warmed up, then showed my mum what a terrible temperature I had! 

Jack Rix inspiration for A Tangled Web

The story called A Tangled Web came about when my youngest son Jack woke up one morning with a bad cold. His chest was tight and he said to me, “It feels like spiders are spinning a web around my ribs.” Brilliant! I left him in his sick bed and went upstairs to write a story about a boy who tortures spiders, and the spiders take their revenge by setting up home in his chest!

And when I remembered Struwwlpeter, I realised that what I was writing was a modern collection of Cautionary Tales – Unlike the stories of Roald Dahl where the adults tend to be bad and the children the heroes, I had bad children in my stories who needed to be taught a lesson!

Helen Rix inspiration for Mrs Frightfully Busy

Nigel Planer,  Voice of Grizzly Tales

The original BBC Radio 4 series

Series 1-6 and Special for Citv

The New Series for Nickelodeon UK

"Grizzly Tales has been a good first reading experience for most of the children I know, and I was giving the books as presents long before Jamie Rix and I started to record the series. It encourages children to read because there is a certain element of dare in it;  "are you brave enough to read this? On your own? At night?"

The first readings were indeed for BBC radio, where I had been booked independently of Jamie's and my partnership, which the BBC were unaware of at the time. I assumed it must have come through Jamie, but in fact he was surprised when he found out that it was me. If the BBC had thought of me as the right person for the horrible tales then we knew from the very beginning that I was the man for the job of the series.

We created the character of the narrator so that the many different stories would have some kind of overall cohesion, like bookends. If I'd known we'd still be doing it now, ten years or more later, I think I'd have made the voice a little less gravelly and rough. Sometimes, I just end up in fits of coughs in the studio, and after a couple of days have a really sore throat!  But it's fun having a character you can go back to again and again." 

Sara Bor  Co producer, co director

I read Grizzly Tales for Gruesome Kids from cover to cover and was completely captivated by the stories, description and visual imagery.  I felt an empathy with Jamie's twisted, macabre, dark humour, so reminiscent of the Struwwelpeter books of my childhood (I was also threatened with The Story of Little Suck A Thumb). What really appealed to me about adapting these wonderful stories for TV was that they were new and fresh, there was nothing out there like it and  I particularly wanted the design and look of the series to have that originality.

My first meeting with Jamie Rix  in 1993 in the 'Hand and Shears' pub (famed for its fantastic sausage sandwiches) is memorable because it was the day we relocated our studio out of the Smithfield in London EC1 to a converted barn in the rolling hills of Mid Devon. 

My favourite stories and the ones I vividly remember storyboarding and designing are The Barber of Civil, The New Nanny and Dr Moribundis

Simon Bor   Co Director & co producer  Grizzly Tales

We were moving our studio from London to a converted barn in Devon, and we took on a consultant to help us with our new project, Wolves Witches & Giants . One of the first meetings Jill had, was at the new ITV company, Carlton, which had just replaced Thames.   “I’ve just met the man I want to marry”, she had said after her meeting with Michael Forte. On meeting Michael ourselves, Jill’s pin up, turned out to be a bit of a comic, mimicking rival children’s commissioners and recounting amusing stories about his days in Saturday morning telly.

He didn’t go for our show, though he was later to inherit it once Carlton had taken over Central , our subsequent backer. As we were leaving he said “look, I like what you guys do. Have a look at this book Get in touch with the author, and see if you can come up with something” The book was Grizzly Tales for Gruesome Kids.

After four series of Wolves Witches & Giants, we entered into a development deal with Carlton to find its successor, and seven years after our first encounter of Jamie Rix’s creations, the first series of Grizzly Tales aired on ITV. Now, a subsequent eleven years has passed, and we’ve just completed the seventh, new improved series, this time for Nickelodeon UK, but for me, the Grizzly journey started in Michael Forte’s office in 1993, and the reading of the hardback edition of the first Grizzly collection, which still sits on my bookshelf.

Ed Welch  Music (including all three versions of the Grizzly Theme)

I also remember the cautionary tales of Strewwelpeter. I was bought up on them a hundred years or so ago....my Mother[who was 16 at the time] passed the book under my cell door and said if I didn't pull myself together then someone called Bor would make me compose the music for 7 series of Grizzly Tales! I decided to mend my ways and became an angelic choirboy as you can see ...but still had to write the music anyway which was NOT FAIR!!!! 

Ed Welch aged93

"Doctor Who Live" Actor Nigel Planer Returns

Nigel Planer (Vorgenson, from Dr Who Live,) returns in May with stories from the past, stories from the present and stories from future. Featuring weevils, super heroes and the end of the world, this is a re-imagining of the original long running children's series.

Yes! After last year's huge ratings success of the original show's transfer from CITV to Nicktoons, Grizzly Tales is back for 26 brand new episodes.

Based on the best-selling series of books by Jamie Rix, Grizzly Tales for Gruesome Kids has been renamed and reinvented for a modern audience with even more twisted, dark stories to delight children everywhere.

In the tradition of Belloc, Struwlpeter and Grimm, these cautionary tales are narrated by Nigel Planer as The Night Porter, the shadowy figure who presides over the Hothell Darkness, a guest house in the bowels of the earth, where all naughty children end up and receive their comeuppance… for eternity.

Each tale reveals the heinous crimes of bad boys and girls and revels in their gruesome punishments. These funny stories inhabit a simple world of good and evil in which ghouls, ghosts, and giant spiders take their gory revenge.

Children who love to laugh in the face of fear will adore the vile horrors and comic twists of this new series for Nickelodeon. No less than you would expect from a multi-award winning show that promises cautionary tales for lovers of squeam!

Grizzly Tales – Cautionary Tales for Lovers of Squeam

Narrated by Nigel Planer

Written, co-directed and co- produced by Jamie Rix

Co-directed and co-produced by Sara & Simon Bor

A Grizzly TV production for Nickelodeon UK

Distributed through ITV Global Entertainment

Imagine Advert

Here's the new Grizzly Tales advert for the new look Imagine magazine. Spring issue now on sale priced £7.99

Not the Ten O'clock News

The original series continues in the UK on .NickToons

Tonight at 10pm on Nickelodeon in the UK   4 episodes of Grizzly Tales

Tag,

Prince Noman

Jack in a Box

Litter Bug

New Grizzly Down Under

Watch out down there!!!   The Night Night Porter is coming.

C21 have announced that the New Series of Grizzly Tales is heading for ABC in Austrailia, home to the original series down under.  Also reported on Digital Spy and World Screen News


Commenting on this an other programmes sold ahead of MIP TV, Augustus Dulgaro, at ITV Studios said,

"There is great demand in this region for high-quality primetime content across all genres and we are delighted to confirm this wide range of deals," he said.

"The programming acquired for audiences in Australia and New Zealand is a fantastic representation of the strong content and wide breadth of variety in our portfolio and we are looking forward to seeing these titles debut throughout 2011."