8 January 1993 (1993-01-08)– 21 September 2001 (2001-09-21)
Zzzap (rendered ZZZap!) was a British children's television comedy programme, produced by The Media Merchants and Meridian Broadcasting, and broadcast on CITV from 8 January 1993 until 21 September 2001, for ten series. The series focused on a series of shorts involving a variety of characters from a comic book that is brought to life, with stories mainly involving visual humour in order to cater to deaf children.
Format
Zzzap focuses on a series of short comic-book style stories featuring a variety of characters, who star within the titular comic book, dubbed as "The Television Comic", which is brought to life by its readers via a magic television remote. Each episode would consist of four shorts, designed mainly for comedy, often presented with some incorporation elements of comic book elements - such as comic panel borders and information boxes. On occasion, the show would sometimes have episodes that would include a quiz-styled short, involving young viewers guessing what an object was before they are revealed in full.
Throughout the series run, the shorts featured the following characters:
Cuthbert Lilly - A dim-witted, clumsy man, who would attempt to do something, but always through a combination of bad luck and mistakes find them going wrong.
Tricky Dicky - A masked spy, who would challenge a group of children to successfully complete a mission of his; the character only featured in the first series.
Smarty Arty - An artist who uses his artistic skills for fun. In the first series, the character would create large-scale artwork with objects - similar in format to CITV's Art Attack - but from the second series afterwards, the focus was on comedic plots where the character would have adventures through drawing objects he would use.
Minnie Magic - A magician who tries to use magic for fun adventures, but who often finds it backfiring in amusing ways whatever the task she is using it for; she replaced Smarty Arty after the seventh series.
The Handymen - A pair of gloved hands who perform tricks and make food and artwork for an audience of living hands. The short was often aimed as a step-by-step guide to teach children how to do tricks or craft something.
Daisy Dare - A female trickster, who would challenge a group of children to complete a simple task that is made more challenging; the character replaced Tricky Dicky from the second series onwards.
The show was primarily designed with deaf children in mind, and thus focused on silent-styled comedy, with some sounds given textual overlays in a similar manner to comic book stories; the audience featured in The Handymen segments also used sign clapping instead of actuall clapping per the show's design. Regular music featured, often relying on pieces from classic Hollywood entertainment, and characters were given their own sounds for regular young audiences.
Episodes were designed to fit at least a fifteen minute broadcast slot, with each short written to cover roughly a quarter of that time. Between the first and ninth series, the show relied on a transistion sequence in which the camera zoomed in a panel on the comic corresponding to the short about to be shown. The production of these sequences was done with the camera starting at each panel that would be used, and then pulling back to a wide shot, before the camerawork was reversed in post-production - this technique was done to aid the camera operator in aligning the camera squarely with the panel.
In the first series, the show's opening titles focused on a young boy buying the comic and using it's TV remote to bring it to life, with the closing titles later seeing him shrink it down and leaving with it. The scenes were shot at Chequers Shopping Centre in Maidstone; for the rest of the series, these scenes were dropped in favour of opening sequence feature sneak-peaks of the shorts to be shown. By the eighth series, some computer generated additions were included in episodes, before the final series introduced a CGI roulette of the panels to replace the comic-book transistion scene.
The series was more recently broadcast on the CITV channel in 2006, 2007 and 2009. There were plans to broadcast the programme as part of CITV's 30th anniversary in January 2013, but this did not go ahead due to licensing issues.
The Smart Arty elements and The Handymen were repeated in the US and Canada as part of It's Itsy Bitsy Time on Fox Family and Treehouse TV, respectively, with Smart Arty being renamed to "Art to Art with Arty Art". The segments ran from 1999 until 2001.
ZZZap! was also screened on TVOntario in Canada in its original format, alongside the runs on It's Itsy Bitsy Time.
The series was also broadcast on the local military forces television networks BFBS and SSVC Television as part of their children's programming blocks Children's SSVC and Room 785. The network was shown on television transmissions in Germany, Belize, Cyprus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Falkland Islands and Gibraltar.[citation needed]
The show uses library music to score sketches, and any filler panels. The theme tune is Keystone Chaos, composed by Ron Aspery, from the KPM library. The background music used in the majority of The Handymen sketches is Memories of the Music Hall, composed by Roger Webb, from the De Wolfe Music Library.
Track(s) used from the Music House Library (KPM Music) for Cuthbert Lilly sketches:
Candid Camera (MHE 3): "Vintage Hollywood" by Alan Hawkshaw
Children's Hour (KPM 147): "Animal Capers" by Tony Kinsey
Comedy & Animation Volume I (KPM 367): "Busy Days"
Comedy Classics (MHS 13): "English Country Garden", "He'd Have To Get Under"
Comedy Classics 1 by Ron Aspery (KPM 131): "Banana Skin", "Bundle Of Fun", "Goodbye Rodney", "Jobsworth", "Morning Darling!", "Roll Up! Roll Up!", "Round the Bend", "Tea Dance", "What A Cheek!", "Runaround"
Come Dancing by Sam Fonteyn (KPM 1151): "Love In June", "The Mirabelle Waltz", "The Silver Ballroom"
Fun/Novelty/Kids (CAR 237): "Seaside Piano"
Memories Of The Music Hall by Roger Webb (DWCD 0082): "After The Ball", "Daisy Bell", "I'll Be Your Sweetheart", "Lily Of Laguna", "Memories Of The Music Hall", "Old Time Waltz", "Schoft-schoe Schottische", "The Honeysuckle And The Bee", "Why Am I Always The Bridesmaid?"
Period Pieces/Hotel Ballroom (BMLP 111): "Quick Waltz"
Victoriana (Parts 1 and 2) (KPMLP 1116): "Tea Dance"
