Round the Bend

Round the Bend
Genre	Satirical children's television series
Created by	Patrick Gallagher Tony Husband Mark Rodgers
Written by	Patrick Gallagher Tony Husband
Directed by	John Henderson
Starring	Anthony Asbury Simon Buckley (Series 2-3) Richard Coombs (Series 1-2) Alistair Fullarton (Series 1) Barnaby Harrison (Series 2-3) Nigel Plaskitt Kaefan Shaw John Wheatley (Series 3) Tony Robinson (one episode, Series 1)[1] Aswad (one episode, Series 1)[2] John Fashanu (one episode, Series 1)[3]
Voices of	Jon Glover Jonathan Kydd Philip Pope Enn Reitel Kate Robbins Susan Sheridan
Composers	Philip Pope Simon Franglen Big George (Series 3)
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Original language	English
No. of series	3
No. of episodes	18
Production
Executive producer	Denise O'Donoghue
Producer	John Henderson
Cinematography	Martin Hawkins (Series 1) Albert Almond (Series 2-3)
Editors	Mike Cross (Series 1) Mykola Pawluk (Series 2-3)
Camera setup	Martin Hawkins (Series 1) Albert Almond (Series 2-3)
Running time	20 minutes
Production companies	Hat Trick Productions Yorkshire Television
Original release
Network	ITV (CITV)
Release	January 6, 1989 (1989-01-06)[4] – May 7, 1991 (1991-05-07)[5]
Infobox instructions (only shown in preview)

Round the Bend! is a satirical British children's television series, which ran on Children's ITV for three series from January 6, 1989, to May 7, 1991. The programme was produced by Hat Trick Productions for Yorkshire Television. After its first run concluded, it was later repeated on Channel 4, The Children's Channel and Nickelodeon UK (the "Yorkshire Television Production" and "A Yorkshire Television Production for ITV" company logos were also removed from the end of the episodes in each case, and they would just fade to black where they originally were), and was nominated for an RTS Award.

The programme was created by the team behind the comic Oink! (Patrick Gallagher, Tony Husband, and Mark Rodgers). The puppets, animated characters and main sewer set were designed by Gallagher, who was also the programme's graphic designer. The puppets were made by the team who made the ones for Central Television's Spitting Image. Round the Bend! was a satirical parody of Saturday morning magazine shows, with a host providing linking material between cartoons, music videos and news reports (albeit set in a sewer). The anarchic tone of the programme and its parody cartoons was like that of Viz.^{[citation needed]} The animated sketches were produced by Catalyst Pictures (who made the crudely drawn cel animations and stop-motion cardboard animations) and Aardman Animations (who made the clay-animated serials, all three of which were spoofs of B-movies).

The title of the programme is a double entendre. Referring to a toilet U-bend, the cel-animated opening titles began with the camera being flushed down a toilet and ending up in a sewer (for the first series' opening titles, a live-action boy also sat at his kitchen table waiting for his copy of the Round the Bend! comic to be delivered, and when his mother grabbed it after it came through the letterbox just before he could, he mouthed something that made the comic give her an electric shock and forced her to drop it, and the view then changed to the now-fully-animated shot of the comic's front cover). It was also a popular saying at the time to describe someone who was insane.