Murun Buchstansangur

Murun Buchstansangur
Murun Buchstansangur
Genre	Animation
Written by	Timothy Forder
Directed by	Timothy Forder
Voices of	Timothy Forder
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Original language	English
No. of episodes	52
Production
Producer	Mary Swindale
Running time	5 minutes
Production company	Bevanfield Films
Original release
Network	Channel 4
Release	1982 – 1988

Murun Buchstansangur was a series of animated shorts produced by Bevanfield Films for the TV station Channel 4 in the United Kingdom. It comprised fifty-two episodes; each was written, directed and narrated by Timothy Forder.

The title character (often confused as being German due to his name) was a small creature - with no body as such, he had arms and legs directly attached to his head, and had greyish-blue skin with a mop of brown hair. He wore brown clogs and a wristwatch. Murun lived in the kitchen of a rather dreary house in an unspecified town where it seemed to rain almost constantly (although he once received a letter with his address showing as W13, which would make it Ealing, London). Curiously, given that he lived in a human-scale house, very few full-sized human characters were featured in the cartoon. While many of Murun's acquaintances had human form, they were, in almost every case, the same height as Murun himself. However, a full-sized human character, Nigel, featured in just one episode. As he was so much taller than Murun, all that was seen of him were his legs and feet, like Mammy Two-Shoes in the Tom and Jerry cartoons by MGM.

The series was notable for its oblique, downbeat tone. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given his surroundings, Murun was a somewhat melancholy, philosophical character, though he was not lonely - in fact he had quite a large number of friends, neighbours, family members and acquaintances. Rather than Murun having exciting adventures, the narrative of each episode usually centred on a problem or dilemma that Murun would ponder, sometimes helped by his friends and relatives.

The first episode was shown in 1982; fifty-two were made, and the animation was repeated into the 1990s, mostly as filler material in scheduling gaps between other programmes.

External links and references

• Murun Buchstansangur at LittleGems - includes a detailed summary of the first episode.
• Murun Buchstansangur at Toonhound