“Grizzly Tales for Gruesome Kids” Delivering Great TV Ratings For NickToons UK

According to this Nickelodeon UK News article on Broadcast about the animated Nickelodeon UK and Ireland show “Grizzly Tales for Gruesome Kids” winning the Broadcast Award for “Best Children’s Programme” at the recent “Broadcast Awards 2012″ ceremony on Thursday 2nd February 2012 at London, UK’s Grosvenor House Hotel, “Grizzly Tales for Gruesome Kids”, a animated series of cautionary grizzly animated tales for lovers of squeam, guaranteed to spook even the naughtiest kids, with tales of how misbehaving children get their comeuppance, is delivering great ratings for Nickelodeon UK’s animation channel, NickToons UK and Ireland, and is a regular fixture in NickToons’ and/or NickToon Replay’s top 10 rated programmes since “Grizzly Tales for Gruesome Kids” premiered on Nickelodeon UK and NickToons UK in March 2011:

Best Children’s Programme

Grizzly Tales

Grizzly TV for NickToons and ITV Global Entertainment

The 26 Grizzly Tales try to effect change in kids’ bad behaviour by both amusing and terrifying them – “a brave, raw and original approach”, according to our panel.

The 11-minute tales often stray dangerously close to TV horror for kids but by carefully balancing content and taste, they manage to get the tone pitch perfect.

“It is unusual for children’s TV to produce such daring, funny and outrageous storytelling,” said one judge. “And that deserves to be celebrated.”

However, another judge added that even with its daring approach, it remains “absolutely child-focused.”

Episodes such as Death By Chocolate and Sick To Death sum up the series’ distinctive feel. The latter tells the story of a foul little girl who screams herself sick to get her own way… until, that is, she meets the super-sucking power of the new Shark Deluxe vacuum cleaner, which polishes her off in one guzzling gulp.

Based on the books by Jamie Rix, who also scripts the series, the panel also noted how “the author’s spirit shines right through it”.

Grizzly Tales originally aired on ITV1 and CiTV, where it was one of its highest-rating series. When it unexpectedly came up for grabs, Nickelodeon was quick to make an offer.

The new series was redeveloped in both content and design, with Nickelodeon keen to build on the shows’ edge and dark humour.

Voiced by actor Nigel Planer, mixing 3D and 2D animation, the main body of each episode is produced in Flash by Honeycomb Animation. The panel said that despite the limited budget, the series was “exceptional”.

And it’s proved to be a hit with the target audience, becoming a regular fixture in NickToons’ and/or NickToon Replay’s top 10s since its launch in March.

“Great storytelling made with love” is how one judge summed it up.

I have always said that Broadcast was my favourite industry paper.

It’s a strange feeling as the author. Fabulous that the show has been recognised as still being ground-breaking after 12 years, and obviously hopeful that it might lead to a further series. But in publishing terms Grizzly Tales has stagnated and I need to find a publishing genius who has the vision to repackage and re-present over one hundred cautionary tales to a modern audience. Call me if you’re out there….

Grizzly Tales is narrated by Nigel Planer, co-directed and co-produced by Sara and Simon Bor and written, co-produced and co-directed by Jamie Rix.

Cautionary tales for lovers of squeam

Thanks go to all those nasty little children everywhere without whose bad behaviour none of this would ever have been possible!

But I am reliably informed that what I’ve done over the last twelve years or so, writing forty or so books and selling the Intellectual Property rights in the most successful of them to my own production company in order to fulfill programme commissions from BBC, ITV, Disney and Nickelodeon is sufficiently rare that people will want to hear how I’ve done it. Or indeed why…

Obviously I am hoping for an audience of thousands but will be happy with twenty. Or am I aiming too high?!

Well now I have seen something that picks up The Wow Show’s mantle, dusts it down and lines it with red silk. Spymonkey have been around for a while but I only saw them for the first time last night. For a comedy troupe who are famous for their physical comedy and getting their kit off, they got their kit off more times than I was expecting. Their spitefulness, subversion and unrelenting childishness made for an evening of such joy that I still can’t get the image of The Good Samaritan and Mother Theresa fighting over the blind, starving cripple out of my head. Their names? Aitor Basauri (crap at English), Stephan Kreiss (anger issues), Petra Massey (so flexible) and Toby Park (weak eyes needs glasses). If you’ve got nothing better to do with two hours. Go and see them.

It may be nothing more than a conspiracy theory that Spymonkey might be teaming up with Jamie Rix to produce a theatre show of Grizzly Tales, I cannot say, but as for The Wow Show. Let’s start a petition to bring them back…

For those of you who don’t know who Mr E is, I will let Alistair explain.

“Mr E is a pug dog that belonged to my granny before she died. Everyone hates him, which means that he and me have got quite a lot in common, because everyone hates me too. He’s bad tempered, horribly ugly, licks blood, his breath stinks and he wipes his nose on my socks. For some unknown reason, we saved his life. If we hadn’t taken him after granny’s funeral, the man from the restaurant on the motorway would have chopped him up into cheeseburgers, apparently.”

Mr E shows the cat how to skateboard while singing "My Way"

e-book sales of Grizzly Tales For Gruesome Kids, Ghostly Tales for Ghastly Kids, Fearsome Tales for Fiendish Kids, and More Grizzly Tales for Gruesome Kids are GOING THROUGH THE ROOF and they only went on sale this week! These are the original series of particularly unpleasant cautionary tales that I published between 1990 and 2004.

“Mix Dahl with Belloc and you can anticipate with glee these animated tales of Jamie Rix. Even William Brown’s antics pale beside noisy chocoholic Serena Slurp…” Daily Telegraph

I have also released the first two novels that I wrote and had published in the 90′s – The Dreaded Lurgie and A Stitch In Time. So if you’re a down at heel film producer looking for a fresh old favourite to boost your flagging career, look no further!