Scouring the backwaters of the ITV Hub for a period drama to watch (!!), I came across Fireball XL5 – all the complete series. An early 1960s Gerry Anderson “Supermarionation” (yes, that’s where Super Mario gets his name from) children’s series, I absolutely LOVED this when I was a little kid, and would always watch it, so long as our telly was working – not always a given in the middle of Dartmoor in the 1960s.
Here’s the first episode of Fireball XL5.
I remember it mainly for being the first thing I ever had a dream about, so I knew it had caught my five year-old imagination. However, it seems to have been more influential than I realised, as watching it again today, I see how much Shimmer and Disappear, the music video I animated in 2018, was inspired by it.!
You can find all the episodes of Fireball XL5 here on ITV (in the UK). It’s definitely worth a look. Even though some of the attitudes and views are pretty dated, the craft and the visual storytelling are extraordinary. Not so sure my effort quite lives up to it…! 🙂
In fact, my animation has been described as having more of a “Button Moon vibe”!
To give you an idea, here’s a still from Button Moon:
Coincidentally, all the series of Button Moon are also on the ITV Hub, so that’s where to head if this post has sparked your interest in British Sci-Fi Puppetry TV Shows For Kids!
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