Planet Sketch is an animated television series co-produced by Aardman Animations and Decode Entertainment, with animation production provided by C.O.R.E. Toons. The series was first aired on CITV on 10 September 2005, and later began airing on the Canadian network Teletoon on 19 November 2005. It's also featured in Shorts in a Bunch on Nicktoons Network. The series ended its run on 30 December 2007. 39 episodes were produced.
Overview Planet Sketch is basically a variety series; every episode features an assortment of sketches. What happens in the first one that appears is where the episode title comes from, that being Nose Picker. From then on, several sketches are played out to fill the remainder of the show, culminating with June Spume and Melville, in which a girl named June Spume re-shapes part of her body into a musical instrument and plays said instrument while the credits roll.
Typically only one of each different sketch appears per episode, but sometimes a sketch appear twice or doesn't appear at all. Most sketches are 3-D, but in the first season there were 2-D sketches, which were more rare and often have multiple segments. These segments play between 3-D sketches, which are treated as regular ones, and tend to be slightly shorter in runtime. Some 2-D sketches even appear only once throughout the series.
Planet Sketch received a fairly large overhaul with the second season. Nose Picker stays as one of the sketches that can appear first in an episode, but is now joined by Ninja Handyman and once even Parping Ponies. This season adds a few new 3-D sketches to the mix, but most of the original sketches, including all 2-D ones, were completely scrapped. There are now transitions between sketches; Some show characters dancing or gesturing, others show the logo sign playing a short clip of a sketch from another episode of this season. Additionally, the graphic and animation quallity were decently improved and the artstyle was revamped to akin to that of Nick Park (a major animator at Aardman).
Sketches
Original 3D sketches Source:
Nose Picker: A girl named Olivia has unexpected items stuck in her nose, such as food, toys, and sometimes even other characters. Sometimes she can just pick them out, other times they are causing her trouble with being in there. Ninja Handyman: A family resorts to the help of a ninja to solve everyday mundane problems (such as using a rolling pin to squeeze the last few dollops of toothpaste from its tube). In the first season, the family liked Ninja Handyman, but in the second season, it gets really annoyed and irritated more often than not when he appears. In the first season, Ninja Handyman works very hard in anything he does, but in the second season, he is rather lazy, a bit careless, somewhat insane, and accident-prone. Japanese Fighting Fish: Three fish named Robby (orange), Billy (green or teal) and Mac (pink) claim to be "real hard" Japanese fighting fish. Their usual adventure includes bullying another (typically much larger) fish that is cohabiting in the same tank, or another sea creature or an item, only for the said fish/sea creature/item to retaliate in kind. Billy and Mac ended their days of bullying in Season 2, but Robby kept on with it. Parping Ponies: Two horses, Horace and his aunt Hortense, try to avoid the embarrassment that usually results from Horace's flatulence problem. Sometimes, but rarely, Hortense also has flatulence. The two keep getting fired from jobs and ruining events due to said flatulence. Mr. Hives and Timbo: A boy named Timbo tries to avoid his teddy bear Mr. Hives, which he claims to have outgrown. Mr. Hives inevitably reappears with his ominous catchphrase "Huggy huggy!". He appears in all manner of places, including in a ketchup bottle, behind the Gnaughty Gnomes and on television. Napkin Squirrel: A storyteller tells the story of a paper (origami) squirrel and what it considers fun in various situations and locations — the things that harm the squirrel in any way, shape, or form are said to be "no fun at all". Dr. Inosaur: A dinosaur doctor tries to eat his patients, but usually fails. In the first season, he works in the doctor's office at a clinic. But in the second season, he works at a hospital and triez to eat his patients anyway he can without being interrupted by the speaker (as seen in "Yoga"). Captain Gagtastic: The namesake supervillain terrorizes a blonde couple, and by extension their family, at different points in their life (such as when they proposed to get married, or their son's seventh birthday) by telling anti-jokes and humiliates them instead of making them laugh. Rude Limerick Boy: A boy is booted up on stage to perform a limerick, in which one word is typically unsuitable for the audience, so he is interrupted before saying it, usually by an object from his limerick. Mad Dad Scientist: A father pretends to be a mad scientist about to finish an invention, only to be interrupted by his son Kirk, which at the same time reveals that the father was simply repairing a common household item, or doing a household task, such as getting a spider out of the bathtub. The Gnaughty Gnomes: An elderly lady (or occasionally a member of the Ninja Handyman family) is enamoured by a set of lawn gnomes, only to faint in shock when discovering that the three or four gnomes are alive and acting in a typically destructive manner. News Casters: News anchors Mike Today and Sally Van have gender wars by taking shots at the opposite gender. It is suggested they were dating with complementing each other at the end of each sketch, and they kiss in the first-season finale. In the second season, the romance aspect was completely removed. Street Rappers: A group of three Roadman street rappers do something in a manner that is completely different from their image (mostly immature things or even girly), only to be caught by an innocent bystander, who is one of the members of the Ninja Handyman family. In the second season, they would rap like normal, one of them would say something dumb, and the other two would exclaim. Why the Dinosaurs Died Out: A humorous take on why dinosaurs became extinct "60 million years ago last Tuesday". Often listed with inconvenient numbers such as 1G or 7.5. June Spume and Melville: A girl shapes parts of her body into various instruments and then plays them while her cat dances. Culminates all Season 1 Episodes.
Season 1 (2005)
Recurring 2-D sketches
My Mother the Armchair: A teenage girl consistently becomes embarrassed by her mother: a yellow armchair with a purse. Swapsy: A girl tries to swap an array of miscellaneous objects for an item that she sees with a random person (ex. the mother of a small boy). Only Joking: A young boy asks his father why something is or why it happens, such why bees collect honey, and his father jokingly replies with fictional comments (ex. Only honey bees collect honey, it's the brain bees you should look out for) which usually results with the boy running away screaming and the father saying "Only joking, son! Dear, oh dear". However, the father's "joke" turns out to be true during the last sketch shown in each episode, and it backfires on him. Ira and Lyra: Two girls tell their mother a goofy fake story to get each other in trouble about why one of them, for example, poured water on the other, only to be caught out for a small detail such as where the bus they get on stops. Okay Coach, I'm Ready: A boy named Nathan dresses up to be prepared for a sport, only to find he's ready for the wrong sport as indicated by his coach.
One-off 2-D sketches
Bill and Phil: Two boys reveal themselves to be disguised in successive costumes of characters from outer space, such as an alien. Talent Show: A talent show featuring an assortment of unusual characters with unique abilities. Alien Game Show: An extraterrestrial game show featuring aliens that talk gibberish alien language. The host gives a question to the four alien contestants, and when they got the answer right, they get a point. If they got it wrong, they lose a point and get punished. Dragon Burping Contest: Another game show, where two dragons must overpower each other and gain points by burping.
Season 2 (2006–2007)
New 3-D sketches
The Useless Starship Computer: Two spacemen named Jake and Captain are always in the cockpit of their spaceship and have problems with their computer (stylized as a metallic silver head with pink hair and baby blue eyes) who acts like a human or acts stupidly. Jake has an English accent, whereas Captain has a Canadian one. Mesmo Mutt: A poodle always gets what he wants because he hypnotizes people, mostly his owners, into doing bizarre things, including things household animals do. Super Ninja Handyman: Ninja Handyman's once-occurring counterpart, white-dressed and really more helpful than the normal Ninja Handyman (in this season). Melville: Replacing "June Spume and Melville", now he works janitor that breaks into dance when the lights turn on. The music always differs each episode. Culminates all Season 2 episodes.
Production Development for Planet Sketch was announced on 6 October 2004 when Bristol-based stop-motion animation company Aardman Animations had joined forces with Toronto-based Canadian entertainment & animation studio Decode Entertainment to develop and produce a CGI/Flash animated hybrid television series for Teletoon and CITV entitled The Sketch Show, thus Aardman's first international co-produced series and its first CGI-animated series (which predated its first CGI film Flushed Away (which real life water would ruin its stop-motion models) released two years later in 2006, and Lloyd of the Flies, its first CGI-animated production without the involvement of another company released seventeen years later), with Aardman's co-founders Peter Lord and David Sproxton alongside its head of broadcast Miles Bullough serving as executive producers alongside Decode Entertainment's co-founders Steven DeNure and Neil Court alongside Beth Stevenson. One year later on 31 March 2005, the series was renamed to Planet Sketch when CITV commissioned the series to broadcast the programme on its channel with Toronto-based animation studio C.O.R.E. Toons providing animation services for the series.
Episodes The series has been aired in both full-episode and short form. The following information is for the full-length episodes only.
The first 10 episodes were shown on Teletoon in three blocks on 19 November 2005, as part of a special event on the channel called "Nonsense Day".
Season 1 (2005)
Season 2 (2006–2007)
Notes
References
External links
The complete series on Internet Archive