America had Disney, Japan has Miyazaki, England has Nick Park, and I suppose Australia has Yoram Gross. After 17 animated feature films he turned to TV animation in the 90's, having immediate success with the long-running 'Blinky Bill' series. 'Skippy' supposedly came out in 1998, though the copyright on the episodes is '97, and I have to admit that despite some shortcomings, I like it.

Set on an island called.... actually I can never quite work out what the island is called. I can tell you the names of some of the islands NEAR it, though - Skippy sets its protagonist as the park ranger of Bushtown, though he rarely seems to do anything very park ranger-ish, unless flying about in a helicopter counts. He's more the guy that keeps the town running while the idiots who are supposed to be in charge muck everything up with their absurd schemes (not that some of Skippy's own schemes aren't absurd). His main adversary is Croco, a wonderfully voiced villain, who reminds me of Ted Bullpit from a show nobody will remember, called 'Kingswood Country'. Croco is a trash collector who manages to swindle his way to become mayor in the first episode (premonitions of 'The Sopranos'?) He has an absurdly egotistical and vain wife (actually Yoram Gross describe her as 'ludicrous'. I like it when people describe their own shows as ludicrous).

Skippy also has a cute girlfriend called Matilda who is the local TV news reporter, who generally aids him in his attempts to thwart Croc. BTW when I say she's cute, it's not like I have a thing for Kangaroos, but while I'm on the subject, I can't help but observe that Skippy has an unfashionably large butt. I mean you just don't see cartoon heros with big butts. Half the time it's hard to find their butt at all. I suppose Kangaroos do have big butts. I never really thought about it. Anyway, enough of that...

I said 'Skippy' has some shortcomings, so I should get to those. The first, unfortunately, comes right at the start. Each episode is handicapped with an introductory theme which, while not downright bad, goes for two minutes. This means that 10 percent of the episode is taken up with the theme music. By comparison, I ran the intro music to one of my favourite cartoons through my head, and it went for about 15 seconds. It's just too long, and it's not that good.

Once you're passed that, things improve, though. The animation, though TV quality, is actually much better TV quality than a lot of non prime-time stuff that was around in the 90's. And the characters NEVER go off-model, as they do in, for example, 'All Dogs go to Heaven - The Series', made at the same time by people with a lot more money. Interestingly some of the backgrounds seem to be drawn with gauche, with gives an interesting textured effect against the very clean lines of the animation itself.

The only other real shortcoming I can think of is that the show has four writers, and some are better than others. This is hardly unique. Taking 'Road Rovers' as an example (might as well, as I mention it later), Tom Ruegger was easily the strongest writer, and when he got an episode it was likely to be one of the best. In this case the best writer is easily John Palmer, whose credentials stretch back at least as far as 'King Arthur and the Square Knights of the Round Table' in 1966. His two episodes on the DVD are noticeably better than the others, and have a bit of an adult track which the others don't. For example I thought it was wonderful, in the first episode, to hear Croc telling an elderly Koala woman, "I'll have yer guts for garters!", or in another episode Skippy wondering when Croc was going to get around to building the Croc Memorial Public Toilets, or one of Croc's dumb henchmen going into a disconcertingly articulate explanation about how European powers used to use convict labour. "It was very popular in the 18th century", and then admitting he only knew that because it was on a computer game.

Skippy, to be fair though, is aimed at kids, and adults aren't going to get the same yucks from it as they would from The Simpsons or even Animaniacs. So what gives it three stars?

I'm glad you asked. I'll tell you right now.

The voice characterisations.

I think I wrote that I was gobsmacked that the entire cast of the 39 episodes of 'Animals of Farthing Wood' was voiced by about 8 actors. Well the entire cast of the 26 episodes of Skippy is voiced by THREE PEOPLE, and what's more, you would never guess they were the same actors recycled.

Keith Scott, Robyn Moore and Jamie Oxenbould deserve some sort of award for their work here. Their versatility and range is amazing. They will do characters with Scots, American, German, Australian, New Zealand, French, Indian, Russian, Irish and God knows what other accents. They will do REGIONAL accents from some of these countries. They do very passable impersonations of various real life celebrities. Robyn Moore (from my own Tasmanian home town, as it happens) alone handles every female voice in the series, and can sound like a 12 year-old Australian, a doddering geriatric aristocrat, and in one episode a cockney waitress and Queen Elizabeth, switching between the two almost in mid sentance. As someone who has directed voice actors, I would have killed to have these three on board. I could have let the other ten people go. Just amazing voice work.

Perhaps that colours my judgement a bit, and perhaps I'd like an Australian series to be 3 stars instead of 2.5, but this is a quality series, best suited to kids, though adults will get a kick out of some of John Palmer's writing.

Oh, oh, I was going to mention 'Road Rovers'. Well, one of Croc's sidekicks (a bush pig) sounds EXACTLY like Blitz, the doberman from Road Rovers. Seeing as how they were both made the same year, and I'm not sure how YG would have got to see RR, as they were working with French and German studios... well, there it is anyway. You'd swear it was the same character.

I don't know if Skippy was broadcast in the USA. It was in Canada, but apparently in French (my mind reels a bit at what the voice characterisations must have sounded like)

Oh, yeah - one more thing. For some reason, although the series appears to be set in the present day, everyone has black and white TV. I have no theory to account for this.