Scooby Doo

SCOOBY DOO
Made by: Hanna Barbera
Shown on: BBC
Years shown: 1969 onwards
Theme tune: “Scooby dooby doo, where are you?/We need some help from you now…”

William Hanna and Joseph Barbera are undoubted legends of the television world, and have been prolific programme-makers over an amazing five decades. But let’s not get carried away. There have been the good, admittedly (The Flintstones, Wacky Races), but there was also the bad (Captain Caveman & the Teen Angels, Fonz & the Happy Days Gang), as well as the downright weird (Young Samson & Goliath, Amazing Chan & the Chan Clan.) And to be honest, Scooby-Doo wasn’t the sanest of concepts. Scooby-Doo himself was a giant dog of undetermined breed, who half barked, half talked, and who - despite the theme song - was no help at all. He got his name from the song ‘Strangers in the Night’ by Frank Sinatra, which had the filler line, “doo be doo be doo”. Yes, really.

Scooby travelled around in the Mystery Machine, a brightly painted combi-van, with a bunch of ‘kids’ who were intent on solving paranormal crimes, not for money, but seemingly for the good of their health. The gang’s leader was the square-jawed Fred, with his blond helmet-hair and an orange neckerchief - he was very self-righteous and patronising, and was clearly up to no good with the glamorous redhead, Daphne (he was always concocting situations where the gang would have to split up, and he and Daphne would go one way…) The brains of the operation was Velma, the nerdy librarian type, who wore glasses and a cosy polo-neck, and it was she who always got to the bottom of the mystery. Lastly, there was Shaggy, who was intended by the animators to be a hippy, but just looked more like a badly-dressed college drop-out (often the same thing, I suppose); he was a complete coward, and would be sent off with Scooby to check out the darkest alleys and the spookiest attics. Shaggy was voiced by American DJ, Casey Kasem, and had a number of trademark phrases, such as “Zoinks!” and “Scoob, old buddy, old friend, old pal” - and was frankly very annoying.

The plot to Scooby Doo (the series had a number of titles, including the original Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?, New Scooby-Doo Movies, Scooby’s All Stars) was the same every episode: there would be some kind of apparent haunting, but it would always turn out to have a rational explanation, and the culprit would be the only other person the gang had met. They would unmask a ghost to reveal Old Man Withers, or Mr Johnson from the Museum, who would then shake their fist and complain that they “would have got away with it, if it hadn’t been for those meddling kids.” Quite.

Then, in 1979, a real monster was born, and its name was Scrappy-Doo. Scooby and Scrappy-Doo was the same, tired formula, plus the added annoyance of Scooby’s pugnacious nephew, Scrappy, who, unlike his uncle, could talk and ‘wise-crack’. He got into more fights than Mike Tyson, and would have to be held back from doing something inadvisable every two minutes ( “Puppy Power!” he would cry, before charging into the fray) - if only someone had let him get mashed to a pulp.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 3/10

(Thanks to www.konsolen.net for the borrowed pic)