Tales from Europe

For a brief period in the early 1960s, the BBC Family Programming Department's ability to make drama programmes was limited.^[2] However, acquisition of such content was possible via international television and film festivals, where broadcasters could purchase foreign-language productions. Peggy Miller, a producer in the department and a former wartime translator with experience in negotiating and adapting films from overseas broadcasters, began work in 1964 on a new children's strand under the banner title Tales From Europe.^[3] The department scouted foreign film festivals for suitable material,^[4] and the resulting strand provided access to high-production-value fantasy programming from abroad.^[5] They found films that were made not by television companies, but by their respective countries' national film industries, which were all heavily subsidised.

The films featured in Tales from Europe were acquired rather than produced by the BBC. Many originated as feature-length cinema productions created by state-funded studios in Eastern Europe. The BBC adapted these films for broadcast through editing and English-language dubbing. This approach allowed the corporation to present visually ambitious material at relatively low cost.

Edward Barnes, former head of children's programmes, recalls:^[4]

The Eastern Europeans were making first-class feature films for children, and they didn’t ask very much for them. We would re-edit them into short series, and, because we couldn’t afford dubbing, we’d add narration over the dialogue. This became virtue from necessity, because the viewers could hear the original language and it gave them a taste of other cultures and other worlds.

The imported productions originated from countries including East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, Sweden, Denmark, France, Switzerland and the Soviet Union. Many stories were based on traditional European folklore, particularly those associated with the Brothers Grimm.^[6]

Films were broadcast between 1 October 1964 and 22 May 1969, with several films repeated during that sequence. A few were rebroadcast on their own in the 1970s.

Each instalment typically consisted of a serialised or self-contained story, often divided into multiple weekly parts. The films were broadcast in instalments (typically 2–4 parts) introduced by Peggy Miller, and either dubbed into English, or with English narration over the original soundtrack, leaving the foreign-language dialogue audible.^[5] The programmes were typically broadcast on Thursday afternoons around 17:25, following Blue Peter.

During the 1960s, imported programming was relatively rare, particularly from Eastern Bloc countries. The strand exposed British audiences to a wide range of storytelling traditions and visual styles, and demonstrated the BBC's willingness to experiment with non-domestic content to supplement its children's output. The use of dubbed or audible foreign dialogue and unfamiliar cultural settings contributed to a unique viewing experience compared to domestically- or American-produced children's programmes of the period.

Although relatively obscure compared to flagship programmes, Tales from Europe retains a cult following among viewers who recall its distinctive storytelling style. In particular, The Singing Ringing Tree became widely remembered for its surreal imagery and has been described as both memorable and unsettling for viewers. Marina Warner observes that:^[4][7]

The Singing, Ringing Tree seems strangely more relevant now than it did 10 years ago … Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings film have brought the idea of fantasy with a strong moral message back into the mainstream. And somehow the East German state pedagogy, for all its risible earnestness, managed to do this in a way which is more idyllic, more heart-warming than these blockbuster films with all their merchandising.

Warner also contrasts the dubbed, live-action films of Tales from Europe with the "Americanised" Disney model; she emphasises their surreal, often frightening visual style as being more "truthful" to the original spirit of the tales.^[8] Edward Barnes comments, "It wasn't anti-Americanism as such, but there was a desire to see that children got as wide a cultural diet as possible."^[4]

John Callow, in an analysis of DEFA's East German fairy tale films, comments:^[9]

… the BBC's Tales from Europe managed to circumvent and transcend the suspicions and stereotypes fostered by the Cold War … Tales from Europe succeeded in embedding a vision of the European folk tale within British cultural life that, for almost two decades, had the power to challenge and supersede the pervasive commercialisation and cloying Disneyfication of the genre.

Marina Warner concludes:^[4]

Fairy tales have enduring themes. [The Singing Ringing Tree] shows a world where kindness and mutual endeavour triumph over pride and selfishness. These are things that children want. Even British children haven't had that mobile-phoned out of them quite yet.

Like much BBC programming of the 1960s, many of the BBC's original broadcasts of Tales from Europe are believed to be missing due to archival wiping practices.^[3] However, the underlying films, having been produced independently by European studios, often survive in their original forms. In some cases, these films have been restored and released separately on home media.

Two of the best-known films in the strand, The Singing Ringing Tree and The Tinderbox, were released on DVD by Network Videos in 2011, packaged together under the title Tales from Europe.^[10]

No complete official episode list survives. However, the BBC's Programme Index,^[11] sourced from Radio Times listings, indicates the following:

• The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe
• Belle and Sebastian
• Blue Peter
• The Flashing Blade
• The Singing Ringing Tree
• The Tinderbox
• The White Horses