Towser


Towser is a British series of children's books created by veteran children's writer and illustrator Tony Ross and published by Anderson Press. The series is about an intelligent dog, Towser, and his friends The King, Dr. Smelly, and Sadie; and a variety of adversaries such as the Terrible Thing, the Water Rats, and Goblin Gobble.

Television series

The series was later spawned into an animated television series narrated by Roy Kinnear and made by British animation studios King Rollo Films running for one season and 26 episodes. It was made in 1982 and aired on ITV as part of Children's ITV on 11 September 1984 and ending on 16 October on the same year. The series was also repeated on ITV in 1988 for a short while and aired one last time in August of that year as part of the summer morning programming on Children's ITV. Towser later aired on Channel 4 in 1990 and was later shown as part of their block of classic children's television series Take 5 in 1994 along with other children's programmes that had previously aired on other networks such as Paddington, Mio Mao, The Magic Roundabout, Willo the Wisp, Tales of the Riverbank, Mr Men, Fred Basset, Ivor the Engine and Roobarb. It has also been broadcast on cable television on The Children's Channel and was shown there numerous of times since 1985 and kept airing until 1996.

Play It Again

Towser was later joined by King Rollo Films' other television programmes Mr Benn, King Rollo and Victor and Maria and both of them aired with a 40-minute compilation programme called Play It Again. The theme song was sung by jazz and blues singer George Melly.

Global broadcasts

Towser also aired in several different countries such as ABC TV in Australia, TV One in New Zealand, TV2, TV3 and M-Net in South Africa, XEIPN-TV 11 in Mexico, Channel 5 in Singapore, NTA in Nigeria and Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network in the US.

Availability

All 26 episodes of the show were released on DVD in the UK by Demand DVD in 2013.

Episodes

*This was broadcast as the 26th and final episode
**Despite being the final episode, this was broadcast as the very first one