Children’s TV can often be a mixed bag. Here the beloved children’s books of Lynley Todd have been dragged into the animated format; perhaps not as successfully as they may at first be perceived to be.

Our story here involves Hairy Maclary from Donaldson’s Dairy, a wooly black dog living in a rural area of New Zealand. He has several friends (all of whom have cute rhymes regarding their uniqueness) and gets into many misadventures regarding mostly bones and cats. A ‘dairy’ in New Zealand is apparently a general store, so I’ve even learned something from this strictly aimed at kids TV animation.

Quite obviously made on a limited budget, the renderings have been taken from original works by the author and converted into characters that can easily be replicated for the animated format. This often involves removing detail like individual hair strands (see Butthead of Beavis and Butthead when he turns his head and you’ll see a good example of what not to do) and unimportant marks like dimples, wrinkles and whiskers.

In this case the transfer of Hairy has been accomplished pretty well, utilising digital ink to shade beneath the hair, adding depth to the character. The rest of Hairy remains hairy and somehow manages to work successfully in his animated movement without appearing like a thousand free-roaming hairs. Naturally much of the original whimsy of the character is removed, slicked up and repackaged as a new improved Hairy and that’s okay, but some of the whimsy of the original illustrations is thoroughly excised creating something slightly different.

Lynley Todd’s original illustrated style of colour pencil and watercolours is copied to a marginal degree, but when faced with a daunting series of maybe 50 backgrounds and a five minute film budget, speed becomes important. And this is where the backgrounds begin to resemble childish renderings rather than professional artwork. Whether this is deliberate or not is hard to say, and while it works to some degree, it is overall a little bit amateurish in appearance.

The series also uses an old technique to mire us in the canine world; we don’t see human faces, just forests of arms and legs. This works too, as with the style of the work, I’m not sure what the humans would look like in the face department. However, overall the series is a bunch of five minute fillers for the ABC aimed directly at little kids with its sing-song narrative and simple rhyming, so big hairy animating reviewers should just shut their traps and say, ‘it’s for kids and they’ll most likely love it.’

So, it’s for kids and they’ll most likely love it.

As noted the animation at times gets a little convoluted with wandering hair, but the real threat lies in the animation of some of the other characters. Some of it is very lacklustre, I have to say, and although kids probably won’t give a dog’s arse, it matters to me. Simple backgrounds rendered in scanned colour pencil or watercolour pencil daubings appear quite amateurish at times, while others are quite nicely done. The 4:3 ratio is obviously TV designed and the layouts work well. Not that they have great volumes of animated characters wandering about, but they are still fairly well framed and look fine. Colours are all bright and cheerful and based in our reality (so there are plenty of drab earth tones).

Narration is executed by Miranda Harcourt and she does a perfect job in reading the story as if watching the film. This mirrors the way children’s books are read on air during kid’s shows and is entirely effective in getting the story across. She also uses emotion in the reading, rather than a droll deadpan and is clear and easily understood. Sound effects are rare and when they appear are usually simple dog barks or cat meows. Sometimes a car door slams or whatever, but they are seldom employed and well synched when they are.

Music is again a simple affair, with Peter Haeder producing very storybook piano tunes that dramatically emphasise any given scene in the mood required (be it comical, scared, rushing or whatever). Quite effective, but only used quite sporadically throughout.

There are no extras included herein with but ten episodes of the show. These are taken from the books spanning 1983-96 and include:

• Hairy Maclary from Donaldson’s Dairy
• Hairy Maclary’s Bone
• Hairy Maclary Scattercat
• Schnitzel von Krumm’s Basketwork
• Slinky Malinki
• Hairy Maclary’s Rumpus at the Vet
• Hairy Maclary’s Caterwaul Caper
• Hairy Maclary’s Showbusiness
• Slinky Malinki, Open the Door
• Schnitzel von Krumm Forget-Me-Not

Anyone who has enjoyed the books will find there are some changes here, but mostly a faithful representation of the books. The quality of the animation could use some tweaking as could the colouring styles, but overall this is a simple, charming little show the littl 'uns will no doubt dig on.