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Pink Panther Show, The

Big-nosed workman falls foul of limitless-paint-pot-circular-pillar-runaround no. 471 The best of the 'middle bits': big nosed 'tec and lingually-challenged sidekick hunt weird three-headed wise-talking jewel thief

LET’S GET the order right here. First came THE PINK PANTHER SHOW, starring your “rinky-dink Panther” of gentleman, scholar and “acrobat” persuasion, boasting utterly unrelated cadging-a-lift-off-a-boy-driving-through-the-desert titles and The Inspector for half-time entertainment (“Don’t say ‘si’, say ‘oui’!” “Si – I mean oui”). These were imperial antics, with the jive-walking feline mostly getting one over generic big-nosed all-white workmen and using his tail as an umbrella/pogo stick/electrical wire/hat stand as appropriate. Next up was THE ALL NEW PINK PANTHER SHOW, which had the funked-up version of the classic Mancini theme, and Pink coming out of a shower, drying himself with a hair dryer and turning into a big pink furball. These were the ones “introducing” Crazylegs Crane, and Pink disco dancing at the end. Finally came THE NEW PINK PANTHER SHOW, which was presumably made between the first two, but which came bearing the rotten Aardvark (“And the Aardvark too!”) and the brilliant “Yes sir, it’s all for you, and funnier too!” titles.

Oh dear: 'middle bit' slumps in quality courtesy of redneck yellow-beaked dopey bird thing getting runaround from smart-arse winged parasite Watch out Crazylegs! There's a buzzy squeaky-voiced twat after you! 'Middle bit' hits bottom: nasal blue wanker adopts Roadrunner strategy to 'kill' an innocent bug the size of, well, an ant
9 Comments

9 Comments

  1. Le Flic

    May 20, 2010 at 11:09 pm

    Damn right about The Inspector being the best of the middle bits, it actually raised a few laughs unlike its successors in that slot. Plus it was brilliantly voiced by Pat Harrington Jr (who equally brilliantly was the head of The Phone Company at the end of The President’s Analyst) performing both The Inspector (never named) and his sidekick Deux-Deux. The names of the instalments were great too: Napoleon Blown-Apart, Toulouse La Trick and Cirrhosis of the Louvre for example. It was my favourite part of the show when I was little.

  2. THX 1139

    January 3, 2021 at 2:36 pm

    That disco bassline in the All New Pink Panther Show theme tune is EPIC. Cool moves under the end credits, too.

    • George White

      January 6, 2021 at 3:08 am

      It’s a slight reworking of the version from REvenge of the Pink Panther. Best thing about that film, the lesser of the proper Sellers ones.

      Slightly o/t, but Return of the Pink Panther began as a pilot for an ITC sitcom spinoff of Clouseau, in the mould of Shirley’s World and From a Bird’s EYe View, before they realised it’d be wiser just to get Sellers back and do a film.

  3. Sidney Balmoral James

    January 3, 2021 at 6:35 pm

    The Aardvark had his moments – he had a certain Rodney Dangerfield way with a line. I remember once, when he was asked ‘Any luck?’, he replied, ‘Yes, but it’s all bad!’ which I thought very witty when I was eight. Still do.

  4. Richardpd

    January 3, 2021 at 11:05 pm

    For a few years in the early 1980s the All New Pink Panther Show seemed to be on most Sunday afternoons.

    Later on it was a staple of summer holiday morning schedules for a few years.

    The Aardvark was based a bit on Jackie Mason, and the Ant’s voice was modelled on Dean Martin.

    • Sidney Balmoral James

      January 4, 2021 at 6:18 pm

      You’re right – it is Jackie Mason rather than Rodney Dangerfield!

  5. Droogie

    January 4, 2021 at 4:48 pm

    I remember being insanely jealous as a kid of of the boy who got to drive the cool Panther mobile in the opening credits . I also recall adoring those small Pink Panther strawberry chocolate bars that were around the same time too.

  6. Richardpd

    January 4, 2021 at 11:14 pm

    I think there was a model of the Panther Mobile made at one time.

    The shows were repackages of theatrically released shorts, & I’m sure some of the better ones were in more than one of the above mentioned ones.

    I presume the didn’t originally have that very fake sounding canned laughter, which DeParte – Freleng Enterprises liked to add to their cartoons.

  7. Tom Ronson

    May 22, 2022 at 11:50 pm

    The Pink Panther was always watchable, if not always gut-bustingly funny. The Inspector was frequently hilarious, too. The less said about Crazylegs Crane and The Ant and the Aardvark, the better; but even they were streets ahead of some of DePatie-Freleng’s other awful cartoons, such as Hoot Kloot and The Tijuana Toads. They summed up a certain sort of childhood bleakness for me – even as a kid, I was painfully aware that they were hacky, sub-standard, lazily-written crap with awful character designs, but I watched them anyway because it was either pissing down outside, there was nothing better on the other channels, or simply through boredom. I feel the same way about the awful 1960s Warner Bros-Seven Arts era of Looney Tunes, which Anglia showed endlessly during the early eighties alongside UPA’s ugly stylized nonsense like Mr Magoo and Gerald McBoingboing. Depressingly ubiquitous on Derek Griffiths’ Film Fun, too.

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