The Pogles

Forgotten TV & Film · 1965

The Pogles was a six-part BBC children’s series created by Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin’s Smallfilms and first broadcast in 1965. The story followed Mr and Mrs Pogle, whose quiet woodland life was disrupted by an abandoned baby, a silver fairy crown and a sinister shape-changing Witch determined to steal it.

The original characters were physical stop-motion puppets — and remarkably, the Witch puppet itself survives today, preserving one of the series’ most unsettling characters.

Why It Mattered

The Pogles was considerably darker than the Smallfilms programmes that followed. The Witch kidnapped the baby, imprisoned the Pogles and repeatedly threatened them throughout its continuous fairy-tale story. Considered too frightening for its young audience, the series did not receive the regular repeats of later Smallfilms productions.

The concept was softened, the Witch disappeared, and the baby became Pippin. In 1966, the Pogles returned as the much gentler Pogles’ Wood.

Six Stop-Motion Episodes

Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin created the programme through Smallfilms in Blean, near Canterbury.
Postgate wrote, animated and narrated it, while Firmin made its puppets and artwork.
The BBC broadcast six black-and-white episodes from 29 July to 2 September 1965.
Vernon Elliott composed the music.

The Witch and the BBC

Mr and Mrs Pogle lived inside a hollow tree and discovered an abandoned baby carrying the King of the Fairies’ silver crown.
A shape-changing Witch pursued the crown through a continuous story involving kidnapping, imprisonment and magical transformations.
The BBC considered its tone too frightening for the young Watch with Mother audience.
Smallfilms was asked to develop gentler stories centred on everyday woodland life.

From The Pogles to Pogles’ Wood

The characters returned in 1966 in Pogles’ Wood without the Witch.
The baby became Pippin, while Tog appeared only in the gentler successor series.
Twenty-six episodes of the gentler successor were produced between 1966 and 1968.
Pogles’ Wood received regular BBC repeats until 1973 and became the better-remembered version.
All six original episodes survive.
Firmin’s Witch puppet is preserved at The Beaney House of Art and Knowledge in Canterbury and appeared in the V&A Museum of Childhood’s Bagpuss & Co. exhibition in 2016.