Aubrey (1980)
First episode title: Aubrey's Garden
How familiar with the show am I?: I hadn't heard of it before.
Is this the first episode?: I couldn't find a definitive episode listing for this show, but at least one website calls this episode 1 and that's good enough for me depending on my mood.
Aubrey is some kind of orange thing that reminds me of the Mr. Men and Little Miss, having simple adventures in a simple world. This show has no dialogue at all, which is a situation we haven't encountered yet in Debutniverse!
The opening sequence shows Aubrey driving a car as it gradually falls apart around him, until he's reduced to rolling a single wheel along. As well as his design, another similarity to the Mr. Men and Little Miss is that the background is just blank white a lot of the time.
At the beginning of the episode, Aubrey is walking along sadly with one of those very personal rainclouds floating over his head. His unhappiness is highlighted by his hunched over position with his hands in his "pockets", but of course he doesn't appear to actually be wearing those clothes, making the pockets' presence a fun little stylistic choice to highlight his mood, if a little bit of a mystery in-universe.
He comes across a poster attached to the white background, showing a sunny beach with people relaxing, presumably advertising a holiday. Aubrey imagines himself sunbathing on a beach, his imagination projected onto the cloud as if he's turned it into a thought bubble through the power of his mind. Then he digs into one of his pockets to find only a single coin, and the cloud melts away, like the dream of a holiday has just become unattainable.
So he goes back to walking along sadly, until he reaches a shop. The window is full of gardening equipment, and there's another poster on it - "Best Garden Competition" with an illustration of some flowers, and, more importantly, a trophy filled to the brim with notes and coins. Aubrey gets an actual thought bubble this time, of himself in a beautiful garden, where a group of men with top hats and big noses walk up to him and hand him a bag with a "$" sign on it. The use of dollars is interesting, as this is a British show.
Aubrey goes into the shop and emerges with a wheelbarrow full of tools. He takes it into a small yellow and red building which I can only assume is his own shed, unless he has a ridiculously tiny house - we don't get to see the inside of it. There are blue birds perched all around the outside of it.
He comes back out with a trowel and a small packet with a picture of a white flower on it, clearly containing seeds. Somewhere in the white void he starts digging up patches of invisible ground, planting seeds, flattening it out again, and moving onto the next spot... and the birds start following, pecking at all the spots he's already done, eating the seeds! The camera follows them for a bit until they suddenly run into Aubrey who is glaring at them angrily. I mentioned that there is no dialogue in this, but there are vocalisations, such as Aubrey's angry roar here, which sounds all the scarier coming from someone who doesn't usually speak. The birds flee.
Aubrey gets a "thinking to himself" look on his face, and a star flashes above his head. Is this meant to represent getting an idea? It's not a symbol for it that I've ever seen. He goes back into the shed, which the birds are on the outside of again, and starts constructing something so vigorously that the whole place shakes around. When he comes out, he's carrying a scarecrow, which he sticks into the ground. The scarecrow has a ragged coat and hat, and a spiky-toothed face which has brown skin and which I can't decide if it's meant to be some kind of racist caricature. Hopefully I'm just seeing things.
Aubrey shakes an angry fist at the birds and starts planting seeds again... and as soon as he starts moving along to the next spot, the birds have gathered on the scarecrow. I don't even need to tell you how ironic that is. They start pecking at the ground and Aubrey chases them off again.
Aubrey gets another idea star and goes through the same noisy construction process again in the shed. This time he comes out with an apparently hand-made phonograph, a vinyl record already in place. He starts it up and it plays a cacophony of sound effects, sending vibrations through the birds on the shed, although the sound waves also go right through Aubrey as he tries to plant the seeds, making it difficult. Eventually he's forced to turn it off himself, and the birds immediately take the chance to ruin his work once more. My main question is how he got the recording without audibly making those sounds himself. And if it's a recording he already had, did he not already have something to play it on?
This time, Aubrey doesn't even bother to chase the birds away - he's just walking along again in his old sad pose in the background, while the birds finish their meal and return to their usual positions all around the shed. Aubrey goes back in and comes out with a deckchair, which he uses to sit in a huff - the birds approach him and he just turns the chair around to face away, to convey his disgruntlement. I like how he's acting like they would even know what emotion he's feeling when the birds haven't been portrayed as anything more than ordinary animals.
Then Aubrey sees the shed and it's like he's noticing it for the first time, as the camera shows us it in full and emphasises how dirty and cobwebbed it is. Aubrey gets a thought bubble of him standing next to an immaculately clean version of the shed. I love that the birds also look up at his thought bubble like they can see it.
So Aubrey goes over to the shed and gets stuff out of it, and tosses some water over it. It must have been really dirty because all the red and yellow comes off along with the dirt and the shed goes completely white! He's shocked and has to get some paints out to restore the colours.
Then he sees the birds hopping up and down nearby and gets another thought bubble, of the birds getting all over the shed and making it as dirty as before again. Aubrey is sad... and then gets a smile on his face as the thought bubble turns into a light bulb. Finally, after those stars earlier, we have a more recognisable symbol of getting an idea.
He goes back in the shed and there is more clattering around. He pops out with a smaller shed and places it on one side of the shed's roof. Then he goes back in and there's more clattering, and we linger on the birds themselves for a while as they watch what must be a lot of activity off-screen. There are visible "sound effects" being emitted from where Aubrey is working, and, like with the thought bubble, the birds are able to look up at them as they fly into view.
Back to the shed, and ta-da! It now has all sorts of little sheds and birdhouses attached to it, as well as plants in pots all around it. Aubrey gestures to the birds to come over, and they all happily take their places in this new arrangement, chirping away. And then hilariously, a group of men in top hats exactly like the ones from Aubrey's fantasy walk over with a bag of dollars and a trophy!
So it cuts to Aubrey relaxing on a sunny beach just like in his fantasy. He's wearing sunglasses and reading a book and drinking something pink. It all looks very relaxing. The camera pans over a little... and the birds are also relaxing on their own sun loungers, emptying packets of seeds into their beaks! Well hey, if there was enough money to achieve that, why not?
This show was pretty adorable. I like the art style and the story, plus the background music was this weird little electronic stuff that was very 1980 and fit the action well.