It had to happen. You don’t think I could continue this epic nostalgia-fest without mentioning cult kids’ TV show Monkey, do you?
For the uninitiated, Monkey (aka Monkey Magic) was a Japanese kids show that aired on BBC2 in the 80s, dubbed (with a couple of exceptions) by English actors such as Miriam Margolyes doing dodgy Japanese/Chinese accents.
It was based on a Chinese story about the Monkey king and his travels with a priest to recover some Buddhist scrolls, aided only by his natural cunning, a water monster and a pig-man and being a Japanese show it was completely mental: a combination of humour, surrealism, fight scenes and Buddhist philosophy.
For your delectation, the explanatory weird title sequence is below, but I’ve included a “best bits of” video as well. See if any of it makes sense to you.
