British stop-motion puppet builder and co-creator of several animated kids shows, Peter Firmin, passed away this weekend.
I only recently found out about his sci-fi kids show Clangers, which initially ran for two seasons on BBC1 in 1969. The clangers are a family of pink aardvark-like aliens who live inside a small moon somewhere in our solar system.
They communicate by whistling and are frequently puzzled by the bits of junk they find floating in space. This episode features an iron chicken. The puppets were all designed and built by Firmin.
Firmin and Clangers returned to the BBC with new episodes in 2015. The reboot, now narrated by Michael Palin, has been very successful and is still running today.
