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TV: N is for...

New Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The

ASIDE FROM that misleading moniker (in what ways were they New?), this was faultless frippery for long summer holidays off school, as endless as the river upon which Huck and pals went about their robbin’ and gallivantin’. Majored in lazy, steamboat-driven nostalgia, knickerbocker and waiscoat pranks, and general old timey boyhood shenanigans (the word is, for once, appropriate). This was the all-live action version, not the ’60s Hanna-Barbera special with cartoon backgrounds superimposed when the boys go through a cave into a standard “magical fantasy land etc.” Tall tales of note included Tom’s fence-painting con-trick and the ‘collect tokens and win a Bible’ debacle. “Come back with them eggs, ya thievin’ varmints!” Theme tune was the dreamiest bit of lolloping Americana ever.

5 Comments

5 Comments

  1. THX 1139

    July 31, 2014 at 10:33 am

    As Sammy Snyders (Tom) would tell you, what Mark Twain really missed out was a talking teddy bear and a pit full of ravenous Tralalogs to trick people into falling in. Now he’s “one of the hottest jazz dance teachers in Toronto” according to a quick Google.

  2. Joanne Gray

    February 20, 2017 at 9:46 pm

    One of those serials that seemed to have a million episodes and shown on a permanent loop, making us kids go down on bended knee one particularly damp summer and beg our parents to get video from Visionhire so we could spend our pocket money down the newly opened video shop up the road. The catch being, the tapes we REALLY wanted to see could only be hired by our parents anyway. So, back to the endless serials on telly then….!

  3. Richard16378

    February 20, 2017 at 11:48 pm

    I remember it was part of the BBC’s summer holiday schedules for years, even whne it was shown every weekday it took ages to get through it.

  4. Droogie

    February 21, 2017 at 1:50 am

    I never liked this dull show, especially as a summer holiday fixture when you really wanted to see The Monkees or The Banana Splits shown instead. It was actually a Canadian/ German co-production, so not such a slice of Americana as it seemed.

  5. George White

    November 21, 2021 at 12:51 pm

    This was actually called Huckleberry Finn and Friends. The New Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was an earlier, stranger series with a live action Huck, Tom and Becky blue-screened (but not chromakeyed as it was film) on to animated adventures while chased by Ted Cassidy as Injun Joe

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