Sam on Boffs' Island

Sam on Boffs' Island is a British educational television series, made by the BBC, and aimed at developing the reading skills of 6- to 8-year-olds.^[1]

Sam on Boffs' Island
Genre	Schools programme
Starring	Tony Robinson
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Original language	English
No. of episodes	20
Original release
Network	BBC One
Release	18 September 1972 (1972-09-18)

First broadcast in 1972 as part of the Words and Pictures strand, it was one of the first television appearances of Tony Robinson.^[2]

Plot

Robinson played the character Sam, who is magically transported to Boffs' Island when he is eating his breakfast cereal in the morning. Each episode featured a 'real life' segment designed to encourage young children to read through storytelling. Other segments were animated.^[3]

Characters

The Boff characters are puppets, who were portrayed by several voice actors including Charles Collingwood. Miriam Margolyes (later to co-star with Robinson in Blackadder) played Sam's mother. The Boffs were stop-motion animated except when they appeared simultaneously with Robinson, in which cases they were hand-operated.

Production

The scriptwriter for the series was children's author Michael Rosen. Smallfilms, the production company of Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin, provided some still video sequences.^[4][5]

Release

In all, 20 episodes were made, and the series was repeated throughout the 1970s as part of the BBC's schools service. It was also the series that brought together Smallfilms with Sandra Kerr and John Faulkner (thanks to Michael Rosen's work with Kerr and Faulkner in Ewan MacColl's Critics' Group). Postgate, Firmin, Kerr and Faulkner went on to make Bagpuss together.^[6]

References

1. Cream, T. V. (20 May 2009). "Sam on Boff's Island – TV Cream". Retrieved 23 August 2024.
2. "Words and Pictures: Sam on Boffs' Island". Broadcast for Schools.co.uk. Retrieved 23 August 2024.
3. Visual Education. NCAVAE. July 1972.
4. Pallant, Chris (16 June 2022). Beyond Bagpuss: A History of Smallfilms Animation Studio. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 978-1-83902-240-1.
5. Rosen, Michael (2 February 2023). Getting Better: Life lessons on going under, getting over it, and getting through it. Random House. ISBN 978-1-4735-9938-3.
6. Hann, Michael (20 November 2018). "'How exciting it all was': the story of Bagpuss's magical folk soundtrack". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 23 August 2024.

External links

• Broadcast for Schools: Sam on Boffs' Island
• Sam on Boffs' Island at IMDb