Camberwick Green, Trumpton, and Chigley were all hamlets in Trumptonshire, a mythical English shire from the creative mind of Gordon Murray, who was responsible for this little stop motion wonder...

Camberwick Green had a whole host of characters, many of which didn’t even live in the village, including its most famous inhabitant Windy Miller. Each show would start with a music box out of which rose a character, the show would then follow that character around as they went about their daily lives. The shows didn’t usually have much of a narrative, the whole basis was that each character would have their own theme tune and as the audience went around the village the various songs would be sung, in fact more than half the show was presented in song.

Not having seen not heard the show for years I was surprised just how much it relied on songs and just how many I still new the words to.

Like their recent release of Magic Roundabout, the Beeb have dusted off their original vinyl recording and presented them on CD. There are only two stories included - Peter Hazel the Postman has an Adventure and Windy Miller Goes Fishing - these are quite lengthy and the whole CD runs to around forty-five minutes.

Once again both the CD and the packaging looks to be reproductions of the original records, My one concern is not that adults will enjoy this but that children, who have never seen the show, will find the whole thing difficult to understand. Without the songs the narrative is fairly sparse and even I had problems in singing along to the section designed for that purpose, I think that it would have been better if the lyrics had been included in the packaging.

So another blast from the past to add to your collection, especially as you can't get hold of the records anymore.

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Charles Packer