It can be hard for New Zealanders to grasp that Badjelly the Witch, Spike Milligan’s mad, wonky story of two kids who go out to rescue a cow and find themselves in peril of being made into soup by a witch, is not as beloved elsewhere in the anglophone world as it is here. It is, like rugby union and fish and chips, a British invention that we have claimed as our own taonga.
As producer Gemma Gracewood observed in The Badjelly Chronicles, her exhaustive, affectionate look at the story in 2020, “Badjelly has been the most requested story on New Zealand radio. Book sales exceed 100,000.
“A stage adaptation is the most-licensed New Zealand play, ever. And, most wonderfully, generations of New Zealand children can recite the story back to front.”
Now, Aotearoa’s relationship with Badjelly has taken a significant step forward with the debut of a new cartoon series that adapts and expands the tale Milligan originally devised to get his own children to sleep. It comes with a spectacular line-up of voice talent, including Miriam Margolyes as the titular witch, and production partners in the UK and Canada. Getting it to screen has added new layers to the local love affair.
Alex Leighton, co-founder of the Auckland-based animation company Mukpuddy, was drawing a witch for a different story in 2017, when “it just dawned on me … has there ever been an animated Badjelly?”
An appeal on Twitter led Leighton and his colleagues Tim Evans and Ryan Cooper to Norma Farnes, who managed Milligan, a challenging client, for half a century. She was interested in licensing, says Leighton, “but it was very slow going because she was at the time in her 80s and wasn’t super-efficient with emailing. Then it just went silent.”
Enter Nathan Graves, who, back when he was a marketing manager for Polygram Records NZ in the late 1990s, noticed that Milligan’s sound recording of Badjelly was still selling on cassette. Before heading off to a new job in London, he arranged for Badjelly to be released on CD in time for Christmas. In the new year, he got a call from his old boss, Adam Holt.
“And he said, ‘The bloody thing’s gone platinum, mate,’” Graves recalls.
Five years later, another job in music publishing brought Graves into contact with Jane Milligan, the daughter to whom the book is dedicated.
“We went to the pub, and she had no idea that Badjelly the Witch was a cult phenomenon anywhere, let alone New Zealand. She was tickled pink,” he says. “We arranged to make a platinum award for the CD and had it couriered over. I gave it to her, and she bawled her eyes out.”
By this stage, Farnes had died so Graves became the family’s licensing agent. He put the company in touch with Milligan’s children.
“Spike’s children, Jane especially, are very emotional about us playing in their dad’s sandbox all these years later,” says Leighton.
“They were worried that Spike’s legacy was being forgotten.”
Revisiting the story did raise the question of how much to modernise it.
“The beauty of 2D animation in particular is that it has a timeless quality. We wanted to lean into there being not too much tech but have gags to make it a little more relatable to a modern audience at the same time.”
Thus, the new Badjelly the Witch has low-key jokes about yoga and search engines, but keeps its fairytale tropes. The 13 half-hour episodes also introduce some new story elements – in Milligan’s original, the hand of God rescues Lucy the cow, but in Mukpuddy’s telling, it’s the kids, Rose and Tim, themselves.
The voice roster is weighted with comedians, including Rhys Darby as Binklebonk, James Acaster as Officer Appletree, Julian Barratt as Jim the Eagle and a marvellously laconic Joe Wilkinson as Dulboot the giant. “We had to constantly pinch ourselves when we were getting all these yeses,” Leighton says about the voice cast.
Badjelly is easily the biggest project Mukpuddy has taken on. The series will come with a new book, licensed puzzle games and even a tie-in with a jelly company. They’re hopeful of a second, even a third, season.
“We’re in it to tell stories and to have a fun time making cartoons,” says Leighton.
“That has happened on this project, as scary as it was. Thankfully, we’ve been able to keep the fun going and not get too stressed out and make this amazing show. So, we’re very, very excited about the future of it all.”
Badjelly is on TVNZ+ from New Year’s Day.
