The Adventures of Paddington Bear is an animated children's television series. It is based on the book Paddington Bear by Michael Bond and was written by Bruce Robb. It was produced by CINAR Corporation (now known as "WildBrain Ltd.") and Protecrea, in association with FilmFair, in co-production with Canal J (Seasons 1-2), and with the participation of Teletoon, TF1 and ITV (Seasons 1–2).
The series premiered in Canada on Teletoon on June 14, 1997, and ran for three seasons until 2000. After HBO began its deal with CINAR in the fall of 1998, the series began airing in the United States on HBO Family in 1999. It continued to air being on Jam until late 2004.
After his home in Peru is destroyed by an earthquake, small huggable Paddington Bear sails to London, England where he has adventures with his new family, The Browns, who find him at a station. As the theme song suggests, he tries to do things right around the place but often finds himself in sticky situations, He likes to writes back to his Aunt Lucy back at home and narrates his adventures to her. Aside from being in London, Paddington also travels around the world with his friend Mr. Gruber.
There are often episodes that are retellings of older Paddington stories.
Characters[]
Paddington Bear (voiced by Jonathan Kydd) - The little bear who goes around with his red rainhat and blue raincoat, as well as his favorite food, a marmalade sandwich. Paddington is a friendly fellow but his curiosity tends to get him often in trouble or lost. After being adopted, he is also known as Paddington Brown.
Mr. Brown and Mrs. Brown (voiced by Jon Glover and Moir Leslie respectively) - Paddington's foster parents. Mr. Brown's name is Henry and Mrs. Brown's name is Mary.
Mrs. Shelia Bird (voiced by Eve Karpf) - The housekeeper for the Browns who knows when something is up with Paddington or Mr. Curry.
Mr. Reginald Curry (voiced by Nigel Lambert) - The cranky and mischievous neighbor next door to the Browns' house on 32 Windsor Gardens. He especially doesn't like Paddington, as he tends to cause trouble for Curry that often leads to injury. He also frequently shouts "BEAAAAAAARRRR!".
Mr. Samuel Gruber (voiced by Cyril Shaps) - Paddington's mentor who comes to him whenever he is having a problem. The two travel together around the world to gather information for Gruber's book titled "The World and its Wonders". Paddington also helps him in his shop back in London as well.
Jonathan and Judy Brown (voiced by Steven Webb and Jade Williams respectively) - The Brown kids that acquaint Paddington.
Prior to this show, there has been two animated series of Paddington Bear:
One, simply named Paddington, was first aired in 1976 to 1980 and was animated by FilmFair and had a significant style, using a stop-motion model of Paddington that interacted with a world entirely made up of animated cardboard cutouts. It was mainly seen in the UK on BBC1.
The other one, aptly Paddington Bear, was aired for only one season in 1989-1990 and was animated by Hanna-Barbera (part of the HBO-owned WBD). This series is available to stream on HBO Max.
After 19 years ended with The Adventures of Paddington Bear, a newer CGI-animated series titled "The Adventures of Paddington" premiered in 2019 and airs on Nick Jr.
After airing on HBO Family for four years, the series briefly aired on the Cookie Jar Toons block seen on This TV from 2008 to 2009. Throughout the 2010s, the series got several new homes: one was on the rival Starz's Kids & Family, primarily on their on-demand service. It was added in 2017, but it appears to not be anywhere on their site as of now. Light TV also played the show from December 2016 to 2020, and Qubo also did from 2018 to February 25, 2021, three days before its closure due to Scripps' acquisition. The series is now streaming on Tubi.
The show was also seen briefly on Sprout's On Demand service.
Strikingly, this show shares some coincidental similarities to The Little Lulu Show, formatting-wise. They were produced by Cinar, during the early years of Jam from 2001 to 2003 both of them aired in the 9:00am time slot (Paddington aired at 9:30), and they both had three 7-minute episodes in a single half-hour show. They both even had an episode titled "The Great Escape".
Some episodes on the official show channel still have the CINAR logo attached to it, as opposed to the Cookie Jar logo which would've replaced it years ago.
