Flipper

FLIPPER
Made by: MGM/Ivan Tors
Shown on: ITV
Years shown: 1966-69 and repeated in the mid-80s
Theme tune: “They call him Flipper, Flipper, faster than lightning/No-one you see is smarter than he/And we know Flipper, Flipper, lives in a world full of wonder/Flying there-under, under the sea!”

The classic sixties series about two brothers and their aquatic friend was shown as part of Wide Awake Club in the mid eighties, but was based on a 1963 film starring Chuck Connors and Luke Halpin. Halpin returned in the series, as 15 year old Sandy Ricks, who lived with his 10 year old brother, Bud (Tommy Norden), and their father, Porter Ricks (Brian Kelly), the Chief Ranger at Coral Key Park in Florida.

The motherless family lived in a waterside condo, where the boys got into all kinds of scrapes with Flipper, the ultra-intelligent dolphin they nursed back from injury. Like Skippy the Bush Kangaroo, Black Beauty or Lassie, Flipper seemed to be able to make himself understood by humans with just a flick of his head and ten seconds of dolphin-chatter. He would rescue the boys when they fell overboard (Bud was, inexplicably, allowed to pilot a boat by himself), foil the plans of evil restaurateurs with designs on dolphin fish-cakes, and even play match-maker for Sandy, whenever a cute young thing would appear at the Keys for a holiday. Romance was also sort of in the air for Porter, in the form of the beautiful, and unlikely, Scandinavian biochemist, Ulla Norstrand (Ulla Stromstedt.)

There was usually an important lesson to be learned, about friendship, obeying your parents, not straying too far from the land, or working together; but there was cheesy comic relief from Spray the Labrador, Pete the Pelican, and Flipper himself, usually soaking the bad guy with a well-timed flip. Most wholesome shows about the great American way of life have some kind of dark underbelly, and in this case, there was a deep, dark secret…Flipper was, in fact, a girl dolphin called Mitzi, who eventually died in 1972.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 6/10

(Thanks to www.tvacres.com for the pic)