Audrey and Friends - Intital Pilot (2000)

Many thanks to @MakaraFurusawa for alerting me to this thread and hopefully I can add some clarity for anyone who cares. Firstly, the above video is NOT AN EPISODE from the series AUDREY & FRIENDS. However, it is a one-off initial pilot for the show that was broadcast on Channel 5 on Boxing Day 2000.

The actual series (26 episodes) ran from August 2002 to February 2003. The above pilot wasn't part of the series and said series differs from it in a number of ways (as you would expect given 18 months of changing/refining, revised ambitions in both directions and economies of scale):

1. Animation on the series was a fair bit better (less scary teeth for example!) albeit still restricted both by its age and the fact that C5 paid 20-25% of what BBC/ITV paid for kids' animation at the time. This show was made entirely for that C5 budget and said budget (as well as its age) should be recognised as a factor re the final product.

2. There was a bigger voice cast on the series and none of the voice artists from the pilot were used on the series for various reasons. Primarily a decision was made to go with naturally younger sounding voices. Youthful Elly Fairman (ex-Hollyoaks) replaced a pitched-up Nicola Stapleton as Audrey and genuine (awesome) children voiced Meena and Stan.

3. Mona was renamed as Meena (by pure chance we later learned this was the nickname of the girl cast to voice her) and the roles of the core three were changed a bit. Audrey was the boring/grounded one as the narrator/lynchpin on most shows is. Meena was the self-obsessed, selfish, vain slang-spouting one (an early incarnation of an Instagram/TikToker). Stan was the geeky, smart, tomboyish and (imho) best one.

4. Most notably the tone changed hugely for the series. Partly because of the writing. It was clear from the outset that the animation itself couldn't be produced to the original budget, so the three producers wrote the whole series for free and used the script budget to pay for extra animator weeks. This meant the show reflected their sensibilities (comedy, sarcasm, wordplay) rather than the children's drama/soap sensibilities of the pilot which was written by proper posh writers!

Audrey was primarily aimed at a 7-11 year old female skewing audience and played out at one episode per week on C5's older kids strand Shake. Ratings weren't great in the UK but it seemingly picked up a minor cult following in New Zealand where it was repeated for several years on PrimeTV.

It probably wouldn't have been recommissioned for a second series, but that ceased to be an issue anyway as C5 then scrapped Shake to solely concentrate their kids' output towards preschool (ages 0-6) on the Milkshake brand. Impossible TV would go on to make several preschool series for C5 (eg MechaNick, BirdBath, The Beeps, Castle Farm, Angels of Jarm, Gaspard & Lisa) over the next decade before Impossible closed in 2013.

[Source for all of the above: Myself. I worked for Impossible TV for its entire 16 year existence. On Audrey I was one of the producers, hired all the voice artists, edited all the sound and wrote 19 of the 26 episodes (script editing the others). Hopefully the above info is handy for one or two folks and I apologise for any childhood trauma/nightmares I may have caused you. Cheers, Adam Peters x]

What in the nightmares is this?

This looks like a cutscene from a PS1 / N64 game but as a tv show
would be cool if someone made new episodes of this

lmao, i love this

The animaton/artstyle looks like Parappa and Home Movies had a child

wow, this certainly feels like a cartoon pilot from 2000

I really don't care for the animation or art style, the characters' expressions are stilted and uncanny. Why are they always wrinkling their eyes?

We have the credits so somebody should just ask the creator david bennett for the rest of the episodes.

I love that dog omg

This is bad

why is she so mean to that dog 😭😭

The writing is so good the only thing killing this is the art style, don’t get me wrong fugly art can work but if they wanted to pull this off they should have went for a more as told by ginger style, which is similar in terms of “art style considered ugly” but more polished and well drawn for the style it was attempting

Why is her hair like that

The dad has a hot voice ngl

it’s so preppy in her

Boris Johnson's Love Child? 😂😅

How does something feel like a fever dream, yet simultaneously, be an actual real show that aired on a popular TV channel.

Art style is like Parappa with Home Videos

I feel like I need to take a language class to understand stand this. This is way too British

Is it bad that I find this cartoon a bit endearing? It reminds me of those Qubo shows. Hope that the rest of the episodes get found.

Why do i keep thinking about FilmCowwww while watching this 😭

i hate who ever made the rigs . not because i dont like the style. because one of them in the intro had the mouth on the wrong way

Its like parappa the rappa but animated bad and i like it

attention British "people"
what is wrong with you

what the fuck is this intro lmao

If this is scary to you you’re probably allergic to peanuts nerd loser

Ok I think I found something worse then rap city kids believe in Christmas

Can we talk about how round and small the dog is?

I live in Canada, and was only born in 2003, but I watched this for the first time yesterday with no prior knowledge and was like “holy shoot I think I’ve seen this, this is familiar af”

I mean probably not but you know how it is sometimes

I love the british accent (i know that the show was british)

love it but the dog slander is too far

Ok

this animation style is so goofy lmaooo

That title sequence is the strangest thing on earth. There isn't any blocking or choreography or anything, they just stand on pillars and wave their arms around and close and open their mouths. They move like alien babies or something.

who the fuck did the visuals and why did they do that

Why do they move like that

This is so silly

This is the most British thing I have ever seen.

I swear the girl in the green dress kinda looks like me 💀

DO NOT WATCH THIS VIDEO!! it's British propaganda and it converted me into a Britain!

i wish british people were real

How do people find this creppy 😂