Wonderland (TV show)

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Wunderland was a television film with Gustl Bayrhammer , broadcast twice in 1983 on the First German Television and on ORF , in which Bayrhammer visits a wonderland in which characters from comics, fairy tales and legends live.

Emergence

In 1983, the readers of the television magazine Hörzu voted the most popular characters for children. This TV film was created from this selection, in which Bayrhammer meets these characters one after the other, most of whom are embodied here by well-known actors or singers and who usually sing a song.

The show was a joint production by BR , WDR and ORF . The script was written by André Heller and Bob Rooyens , who also directed.

With a few exceptions ( Heidi and Maya the Bee ), the songs were specially written for this program and cover various musical styles from NDW to ballads . They were also released on LP and MC on the CBS label. Unusually, the newly written songs do not come from any single composer, but were written by Francis Lai , Christian Bruhn , Ralph Siegel , André Heller , DÖF , Michael Kunze , Roland Heck, Gerd Köthe , Bernd Opinion and Ingfried Hoffmann , among others .

Apparently there were legal problems with the Disney characters. Although Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and the seven dwarfs can be seen briefly on this program, they do not appear in their own songs. The song about Donald was only released on the LP, the song Mouse Aerobics only shows children disguised as mice, one of whom is called Mickey, and the song about Snow White does not show the Disney dwarfs either (they are only beginning to appear briefly in the picture at the end number). On the record cover, Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck are openly referred to as that.

action

Gustl Bayrhammer goes with the television viewers to the wonderland , which consists of a huge sea with 3333 dream islands and numerous rainbows. Bayrhammer meets a constantly sneezing rainbow cleaner, with whom he climbs a rainbow to enjoy the beautiful view. From there he also sees a ship on which Asterix and Obelix are singing a song.

A circus then emerges from the sea in which Bayrhammer is watching two clowns perform. He is astonished to find that the audience only claps monotonously, but never laughs. He learns from the clowns that these are people who suffer from the serious illness and first have to learn to laugh again.

Next, the ringmaster ( Roberto Blanco ) appears and announces the next attractions: the singing elephant Benjamin Blümchen (who still walks on four legs here and has little visual resemblance to the cartoon character known today) and Maya the bee , who performs her flying tricks while Karel Gott sings her song. Then several children disguised as mice perform an aerobics number.

Bayrhammer leaves the circus and wants to do a few gymnastic exercises on a diving board by the sea, but the two circus clowns push him into the water. Bayrhammer ends up underwater in an underwater cinema showing a play from a Donald Duck cartoon. He then comes back to the surface of the water in an air bubble and meets a huge giant who shows him a shadow play about Snow White .

Then Bayrhammer meets Max and Moritz ( DÖF ), two punks with spray cans who, to the annoyance of the rainbow cleaner, smear the rainbows because there are no gray walls in Wunderland. He then flies to Heidi in a hot air balloon , where he also meets a yodelling robber Hotzenplotz ( Fredl Fesl ) and Till Eulenspiegel ( Dieter Hallervorden ).

Eulenspiegel promises Bayrhammer to lead him to himself. He takes him to master Eder (Gustl Bayrhammer) and his goblin Pumuckl . To relax, Bayrhammer wants to play with a western pinball machine in which he sees Winnetou ( Pierre Brice ) and Robin Hood ( Reiner Schöne ).

Back at the sea, Bayrhammer then meets a sad Pinocchio who is lovesick. In a huge tear from Pinocchio, Bayrhammer falls past a window of Villa Kunterbunt, where he sees Pippi Longstocking ( Beatrice Richter ), before finally ending up on a large stage in which numerous residents of the Wunderland perform the final act.

Songs

The following songs were sung in this program:

The following song could only be found on the LP and MC for the show:

  • Wonderland Choir: Three cheers for Donald Duck

In 2006 eight of the songs appeared on the Kult & Kostbarkeiten CD box . Since 2008 all 17 songs have been available as a download album, which is entitled 25 Years of Wonderland.

particularities

When it comes to the content of the songs, the authors took certain liberties and deviated slightly from the original character.

  • Asterix and Obelix sing that they would live in the "village of Kleinbonum". However, Kleinbonum is the name of one of the Roman camps near the nameless Gaul village.
  • Strangely enough, Robin Hood sings about himself in the third person, as if he were no longer there.
  • Pinocchio sings that he has a loving heart like any other man, while in the books the wooden doll represents the still immature child.
  • The portrayal of the robber Hotzenplotz, who sings about the fact that his greatest passion is yodelling, which has no equivalent in Otfried Preußler's books, was also very unusual .

Comparable projects

In France and the Netherlands there was a comparable television program, but only with Abba songs, see Abbacadabra .