Oakie Doke (1995)

First episode title: Oakie Doke and the Lonely Mouse

How familiar with the show am I?: I watched it as a kid, and I remember this episode specifically.

Oakie Doke is some kind of acorn-man thing who lives in a tree, and his neighbours are all small animals whose problems he helps with. It seems strange, but when this thing has been part of your psyche since you were a small child, you don't question these things. And this show is so adorable! This is the second Cosgrove Hall production I'm covering, after Danger Mouse, and it's the first stop-motion series I'm looking at - whether that qualifies as a "cartoon" might be a matter of opinion, but it's definitely animated.

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Another one of those catchy theme songs that has been stuck in my head for years, the song describes how Oakie will help solve your problems if you go to his tree and ring his bell. See, he lives at the top of the tree, and there's this slide around the outside of it and a rope at the bottom attached to a bell at the top, and if you ring the bell then he'll hear it and slide down to see you. It's kind of like a less urgent version of a firefighter's pole.

It's good that the opening shows you how the arrangement usually works, because this episode immediately plays with it. The bell rings, and Oakie sleepily staggers out of his door, stepping onto the slide by accident. His shock quickly turns to glee as he starts sliding down, though. One thing I'll say about Oakie is that his appearance and role give me the impression that he'd be an older character - I didn't remember how young his voice sounded.

At the bottom of the slide, he finds Rain the squirrel.

Rain: Sorry to bother you, Oakie.

Oakie: Oh, no bother. I had to get up anyway - someone was ringing my bell!

Variations on this gag are so common that I literally heard one the day before watching this episode, but I'll forgive it as the target audience would likely have never heard it before. Anyway, Rain explains that she was the one ringing it and that she's come to Oakie with a problem.

So we cut to outside Rain's house, which is built on a wooden platform up another tree, and we meet her husband Rufus and their baby son Hazelnut. All of the animals are really well-designed and well-animated, by the way - and they make Oakie himself look cartoonish in comparison, especially since his mouth is "drawn on" whereas theirs are part of their head and move realistically. Then, another rodent, brown-furred and wearing dungarees, steps out of the house, looking nervous.

Oakie: Hello! Who's this?

Rain: That's what I've been trying to tell you!

She wasn't trying very hard, if they went from Oakie's house to Rain's without her explaining the situation at all! Anyway, now she explains that this boy is named Hickory and the family encountered him this morning. Because the rodent doesn't have a tail, Oakie mistakenly assumes that he's a shrew, but Hickory insists that he's a mouse, clearly quite sensitive about his lack of tail.

This is the thing about this episode I have to complain about. Shrews do have tails. If we're talking European shrews then they have pretty long tails. But the whole episode will act as if shrews don't have tails, and, as a direct result, I spent most of my life thinking that shrews don't have tails. I learned it from this show and then never looked it up until much later.

So anyway, Hickory is a mouse, with a very strong Scottish accent (the other characters sound English). Oakie, realising he's upsetting Hickory, tells him he's a very special mouse, which almost seems condescending after getting his species wrong. Further conversation reveals that Hickory hasn't got a home or a family, and Oakie promises to help.

Then we see outside the house of a family of mice, built into a tree stump - you can see the pattern here. A girl and a boy are playing tag outside, but we initially focus on the parents, Rose and Albert. Albert's voice and behaviour make him seem old enough to be the kids' grandfather, but apparently not. He's complaining that he can't find his walking stick, and Rose points out it's in his hand, which does kind of make him seem senile.

Oakie arrives and introduces Hickory to the family. While Oakie talks to the grown-ups, Hickory gets pulled into the game of tag. The little boy is named Root, and his older sister is Snoot. Unfortunately, Snoot spoils it by mocking Hickory's lack of tail, saying it makes him look like a shrew, further confusing my young brain, and making Hickory wander off despondently.

I have to say that I like the way all of the mice's noses occasionally twitch, which happens consistently throughout the whole episode. It's such a minor detail that makes them feel more like real mice.

Oakie is about to tell everyone something important when he realises Hickory isn't there, and Root rats out his sister to their mother.

Rose: Snoot Corncracker, I'm surprised at you! Were you making fun of him?

Snoot: Only a bit...

Everyone sets off to look for the missing Hickory, and Rose tells Snoot to apologise to him once he's found. Snoot calls out "Hickory! I didn't mean it!" but it really doesn't sound sincere!

There's a short scene of Hickory walking along in a huff, complaining about how everyone talks about him, and another scene of Oakie up in his tree trying to get a better view. The premise of the show is that Oakie solves everyone's problems, so I would have hoped that he would have a better idea than this, but no matter.

Then we see Snoot looking for Hickory. Karma strikes as she gets her tail painfully stuck on a tree root. It's hard to tell how it's stuck, exactly, as it looks as though she could just uncurl it from around the root, but perhaps there is something smaller than we can see sticking into the tail. Anyway, seeing someone get their comeuppance is always satisfying.

Meanwhile, Oakie has made a loudspeaker out of a leaf, and it somehow magnifies Oakie's shout of "Hickory!" so much that it leaves Oakie with a frazzled look on his face. I don't think that's how this would work.

Back to Hickory wandering along, wondering where he's going to sleep tonight (aww), when he hears Snoot crying. I like how he doesn't just look around to work out where it's coming from, but sniffs as well - not just the nose-twitching like he was doing already, but audibly sniffing. They really did put some effort into making them behave like animals as well as people.

He finds Snoot, and when he learns what's happened he of course takes the opportunity to get her back for earlier:

Hickory: At least that's something I wouldn't have to worry about.

Snoot tearfully apologises to Hickory - I wonder how they did those tears in stop motion? - and he agrees to help her. His attempts to free her tail elicit more cries of "Ow" even as she insists it doesn't hurt - perhaps she's just trying not to look like a wuss in front of him. Eventually she's free, and then they're both surprised by a very loud cry of "HICKORY!" as Oakie Doke approaches, with his leaf megaphone, and with his ears stuffed with cotton wool because of the noise. Since his "ears" just look like small leaves coming out of his head, this is portrayed by having the leaves curl around the ends of the cotton wool instead of actually looking like the cotton is inside his ears in anyway.

Anyway, Oakie is glad to see that Hickory has been found, and Snoot explains about him saving her - then we move back to the Corncracker family home where she's explaining it again to her family. Any trace of animosity seems to have finally gone, with Snoot genuinely grateful and Hickory looking shy at all the attention. And now Oakie is able to say what he was trying to say before, which is to suggest that Hickory should join the family of mice, since he has nowhere else to go. This is Oakie's one actual contribution to solving anyone's problems, so I'll give him this one. Snoot and Root both beg Hickory to stay.

And when Hickory questions whether he'll fit in without a tail, Oakie delivers this rhyme - apparently he does one like this in every episode:

A cat's not a dog

And a sprat's not a whale

You can't tell a mouse

By a glance at his tail!

A bit of a confusing way to express the moral of the episode, but sure.

This was an adorable show. I loved the variety of the voices too - according to the credits, only two people did all the voices between them, which you wouldn't know from hearing them! It would be pretty perfect if it hadn't misled me about shrews for all those years.