Once Upon a Time... Life
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| Once Upon a Time... Life | |
|---|---|
| Created by | Albert Barillé |
| Developed by | Procidis |
| Voices of | Roger Carel Marie-Laure Beneston Gilles Laurent Gilles Tamiz Alain Dorval |
| Composer | Michel Legrand |
| Country of origin |  France |
| No. of episodes | 26 |
| Production | |
| Running time | 26 minutes |
| Original release | |
| Network | FR3 Canal+ |
| Release | 1987 |
Il était une fois... la vie (English: Once Upon a Time...Life) was a French animated television series which tells the story of the human body for children. The program was originally produced in France in 1987 by Procidis and directed by Albert Barillé. The series consists of 26 episodes and originally was aired on the French channel FR3.
The series combined entertaining story lines with an enormous amount of factual information, presented metaphorically. The series "Once Upon a Time... Life" is the third season within six seasons that were produced to the "Once Upon a Time" animation series.
The series "Once Upon a Time... Life" taught about the human body and about the different systems in it with the same charecters from the other Once Upon a Time seasons. "The good Characters" represent the body's defense mechanisms, whereas "the bad Characters" represent the viruses and bacteria that threaten to attack the human body.
The depiction of human body is made with the help of animation of the different agents in it such as the Red blood cell, Bacteria, Viruses, the Nervous system etc. Every episode of the series featured a different organ or system within the human body (like the Brain, the Heart, the Circulatory system, Childbirth, etc).
In the original version of the series, the opening theme song was performed by Sandra Kim, the winner of the 1986 Eurovision contest.
In addition to France, the series was also aired in Israel, Belgium, Portugal, Canada, Spain, Greece, Italy, Japan, Norway, Iceland, Holland, Sweden, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Germany and Switzerland.
Characters
The series makes use of recurring human characters originally from the series "Once Upon a Time... Man". every character in the series appeared in a number of versions. One of the versions was as a real person (the old intelligent doctor, the dedicated blonde mother, the boy and the girl, their obese friend, and the pair of bullies) whereas in the other versions the same characters appeared anthropomorphically as cells and cellular functions within the human body:
- The manager of the brain - represented by Maestro, the bearded old man.
- The manager of the Cell nucleus - represented by Maestro (who is usually asleep in his chair).
- Enzymes - The human body's workmen, shown usually as a man in a bib-and-brace overall and a baseball-type cap.
- Red blood cells - represented by a red humanoids including a family group: Professor Globin (old, he tells a lot about how the body works), Hemo, and his inquisitive and mischievous little girl. They carry oxygen bubbles or carbon dioxide bubbles in a back pouch. They become dark red when carrying carbon dioxide.
- Platelets - represented as red disks with a face on and two legs and four arms.
- The White blood cell - The Body's Police force.
- Neutrophil granulocytes - represented by foot-patrol "policemen" which are completely white in color, and wear a yellow star badge. They carry batons and swallow any body parasites that they find. They can clone themselves. Most of the time they function as traffic cops. Their commander is the same but with a European-human-colored head, and is named Jumbo or Jumbo Junior (a version of Jumbo).
- The Lymphocytes - represented by:
- Lymphocytes B as marshals in small one-man round flying craft with two aimable side-mounted hydrojet propulsors; two of them are a version of Peter (male) and Psi (female) (named Captain Peter and Lieutenant Clair). Some other (unnamed) B-cell pilot characters each appear more than once, for example a spotty-faced teenage boy. They can drop antibodies from an underbelly bomb-bay. They can divide; this duplicates craft and pilot. Their uniforms are very light blue with shoulder pads. (Those uniforms appear in the outside world in a few futuristic scenes as spaceman's uniforms/undersuits.)
- Lymphocytes T: the same sort of craft but with a big uppercase T on the underbelly at the bow. They can discharge a smoke that kills bacteria.
- Another sort of leucocyte: hovering spherical craft with several large suction tubes coming out of them. A pilot's head can be seen through a small canopy on top. They can emit smoke which kills bacteria.
- Basophiles: plump women who carry a basket of "histamine grenades" and throw them to attack bacteria.
- Macrophages (as big yellow ground vehicles shaped like frog heads with big front scoop grab and three wheels; each "eye" is a small canopy revealing a pilot's head), "the cleaning services of the body". Most of the time they function as removing the waste of the body and during emergency times they eat the bacteria and viruses.
- Immature leucocytes: teenage humanoids with the same uniform as the lymphocyte B pilots: seen in the bone marrow, which is represented as a police training college.
- The antibodies - as small white insect-like characters which after being launched at infectious agents, fly around the bacteria or viruses and paralyze them. The commander of the antibody battalion is an antibody character named Metro.
- The Bacteria (represented as blue bullies) - the big bad bully.
- The Viruses (represented as yellow worms with hands) - the little bad bully.
Miscellanea
In the English version, in the introductions of all episodes, is a conspicuous misspelling "Once Apon a Time - Life".
A book version was produced, in 50 hardback volumes, each with about 30 A4-sized pages, described as "an Orbis play & learn collection". In it, some of the characters have different names from the television series: The Professor for the Maestro; Captain Courageous (male) and Ace (female) for the lyphophocyte B crafts' pilots; Globus (old), Plasmus (adult), and Globina (child) as erythrocyte characters, Corpo for Jumbo; Toxicus and Germus and Infectius for the bacterium characters; Virulus for the virus character.
Regional releases
A DVD box set of all the episodes of the series has been produced and is sold by the French production company Procidis online on their website in the following versions - French, English, Finnish, German and Norwegian.
Episodes
|
1. The Cell Planet |
10. The Neurones |
19. The Bones and the Skeleton |
Broadcast Information
* Production company
See also
External links
- Web site of Procidis, the series' producer
- Generic of the series
- Once Upon a Time... Life at IMDb
Images:
![[1]](http://www.gtv-land.com/fichiers/iltaitunefoislavie.jpg){kind=link}
![[2]](http://www.gtv-land.com/fichiers/iletaitvieheb.jpg){kind=link}