The World of Peter Rabbit and Friends (1992)
First episode title: The Tale of Peter Rabbit and Benjamin Bunny
How familiar with the show am I?: I know of the books but I'd never seen this show.
As beloved a British children's character as Winnie the Pooh and Paddington Bear, here it's the turn of Peter Rabbit, created by Beatrix Potter, to get his own animated adaptation. This episode is based on the first and fourth books in the series, "The Tale of Peter Rabbit" and "The Tale of Benjamin Bunny".
There's almost three minutes of live action introduction before we actually get into the show, portraying Beatrix Potter actually writing the story, as a letter to a sick child (which is actually how the story got written in real life). You know me, I only care about cartoons, so we'll skip past all that.
Beatrix Potter: I shall tell you a story about four little rabbits, whose names were Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail, and Peter. They lived with their mother in a sandbank, underneath the root of a very big fir tree.
The first thing that strikes me is that the artwork is beautiful, like it's straight out of a children's book. Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cottontail, the three sisters, are identical rabbits in red cloaks with baskets, and we first see them hopping out from the tree arguing about something, until their mother (the larger rabbit in a dress and apron) tells them off.
Peter himself, who wears a blue coat and shoes, lags behind everyone else, casually humming to himself. Their mother basically tells them all they can go anywhere they like as long as they don't go into Mr McGregor's garden.
Mrs Rabbit: Your father had an accident there.
Peter: [exasperated, like he knows all this] He was put in a pie by Mrs McGregor.
I'd describe that as more than an "accident"! Anyway, Potter's narration tells us that Mrs Rabbit heads off to the baker. Peter ignores where his sisters are going and has a quick chat with Benjamin, another small rabbit in a brown coat who's being dragged along by his father, and Benjamin promises to meet Peter tomorrow by the fir tree. He's in the episode title so you know we'll see him again later!
The sisters, who the narration tells us were "good little bunnies", have gone to some blackberry bushes and are gathering them in their baskets. Some adorable little birds hop around them as they do.
And Peter, who is contrasted as "naughty", of course goes to Mr McGregor's garden. What else would you have expected? He sneaks in under the gate, which he only just about manages and his coat gets briefly caught on it. He really does move around like a rabbit - all the rabbits in this are very realistically animated whenever they're not specifically doing something human-like. The other animals, too: as Peter moves further into the garden, a robin hops around and looks beautiful doing so.
Peter starts going around Mr McGregor's vegetable patch, eating anything he can reach. The robin, who has a surprisingly deep voice for a tiny bird, is amused at Peter's antics. Peter points somewhere and exclaims that radishes are his favourite - I don't know whether the vegetables he subsequently pulls up are meant to be the same ones he was pointing at, but they are clearly carrots.
Then we fade back in, the robin is just waking up, and he sees Peter groaning in pain, obviously having eaten too many vegetables. It's funny if you think about it - a lot of mischievous cartoon children would refuse to eat vegetables at all, not gorge themselves on them! Peter goes looking for some parsley, which apparently some people use as an indigestion cure, when an old man with a white beard looms from out of nowhere - it's Mr McGregor! Peter flees while McGregor yells for the "thief" to stop. McGregor predictably has a Scottish accent.
McGregor chases Peter through the vegetables and Peter worries he'll end up like his dad did. In Peter's haste, one of his shoes comes off, and McGregor picks it up. McGregor doesn't seem to think it is strange that Peter wears a coat and shoes. Oh, we're back on this topic again, of weirdness around the relative sentience levels of animals. We get some non-speaking animals in this one too.
Peter trips and loses another shoe, and narrowly avoids being snatched up by McGregor, losing himself in the grass again. Unfortunately, he really does lose himself - he doesn't know which way is the way back to the gate! Peter's voice is very convincingly panicked here, and he's breathing very fast.
He gets trapped in a net, the buttons of his coat getting caught on it, and some small birds swoop down to urgently shout encouragement at him to get himself free. The birds must know him as they call him Peter - also, their voices are quite noticeably being played on a loop, the same lines appearing repeatedly, which took me out of it a little bit.
McGregor must hear the noise the birds are making as he turns his head now and spots Peter, but Peter manages to get out of his coat and flee, with no clothes left, until he reaches a shed. The birds follow, and their voices are still the same loop as before, encouraging Peter to "try" even though he's already escaped the net!
Peter rushes into the shed and into a half-full watering can, and immediately starts shivering from the cold water. McGregor comes in and it's really quite scary, with him looking around the place talking to himself about how he knows that rabbit is around here somewhere. Peter's shivering gets worse and worse until he finally sneezes, at which point he's forced to jumped out of the can and flee the shed as McGregor is alerted to his position. McGregor has some clearly reused lines too, where he keeps saying "Stop, thief!" with the exact same intonation.
Peter, rushing through the garden, encounters a mouse and asks her the way back to the gate. Unfortunately the mouse's mouth and hands are each holding a big round green berry and all that comes out is squeaks, so Peter gets no information from her. She leaves and it just fades out on Peter crying. This show is doing a very good job at making me feel sorry for him, even though it's his own fault he's in this mess.
Next he spots a white cat, which is looking down into a goldfish pond. There sure is a lot of stuff in Mr McGregor's garden. Peter says his cousin Benjamin (ah, we didn't know their relation yet) warned him about cats, so Peter sneaks by very carefully.
Peter finally spots the gate but knocks over a flowerpot as he does so, causing McGregor to spot him. McGregor shouts some more but doesn't manage to catch him, and Peter finally makes it through the gate. What I find a little weird is that Peter then stops to catch his breath not very far from the gate, as if he thinks McGregor can't leave his garden! Peter looks back to see that McGregor has put up Peter's coat and shoes on a little makeshift scarecrow. Ironically, there are birds pecking around it, including what look like crows. Peter worries about what his mother's reaction will be when he comes home late for supper without his clothes.
Well, he gets home, and she's not happy. She refers to him going to Mr McGregor's garden "again" and losing his clothes "again". I'm guessing it wasn't as terrifying the first time if he felt safe doing it again! She sends him to bed without any supper as his sisters all laugh and mock him. But because Peter doesn't look well, his mother does give him some camomile tea.
Meanwhile his sisters are getting berry juice from their supper all over their aprons right when their mother calls out to make sure they don't stain them. You know, the episode doesn't do much to support the narration's assertion that the sisters are good bunnies! Then Peter goes to sleep - there's a rabbit portrait above his bed that has to be of his deceased father.
After yet more beautiful animation, of the scenery at night, it's the next day. Peter's mother, according to a sign she's putting up outside her tree, is a shopkeeper called Josephine Bunny. So if Benjamin Bunny is Peter's cousin, I suppose he's on Peter's mother's side of the family, if her surname is also Bunny. She and her daughters are laying out various wares - there's some milk and food there but also mittens - and Josephine wonders where Peter is.
Benjamin is on the side of a road blowing the seeds off a dandelion clock and also wondering where Peter is, and realising he may have misremembered where he agreed to meet Peter. Then a horse and cart pass by, carrying Mr and Mrs McGregor - Benjamin keeps himself hidden, of course. Mrs McGregor also has a Scottish accent and is complaining to her husband about someone she doesn't like, and mentions needing to buy a new pie dish, to remind us why we need to be scared of her. We don't actually see her in person again after this, though.
When they've gone, Benjamin is excited about the fact that the McGregor garden is going to be unguarded, and goes to find Peter. Not wanting to encounter his aunt, Benjamin slips into the house through a gap between two tree roots, right next to where Peter happens to be sitting. Benjamin laughs because Peter has a human-scale handkerchief around his body due to his missing clothes. Which is so weird - Peter's sisters are outdoors naked right now! What sort of standards do these animals live by? Anyway, Benjamin excitedly tells Peter about the McGregors and they go over to the abandoned garden, where the scarecrow has now also gained a tam o' shanter (Scottish hat).
Peter is going to look for the gate, but Benjamin says it ruins your clothes to go under the gate (Peter is still wearing the hanky), and that the correct way is to go down the pear tree. Benjamin easily climbs down it, but Peter basically falls down it. I shouldn't compare to the previous cartoon every time I write one of these posts, but I'm definitely seeing a similar dynamic here to what we had between Oliver and Dodger last week.
They shake the scarecrow to get Peter's clothes down and he gets changed, although the jacket has shrunk (did the McGregors wash it?) and the shoes are wet. Benjamin briefly tries the hat on but they don't keep it around. Benjamin suggests gathering some vegetables for Josephine in apology - I mean, she's going to know they've been back to the McGregors' garden since Peter has his clothes - so Benjamin starts filling the handkerchief with onions. Peter somehow ends up lumbered with the onions as Benjamin scampers ahead and samples some of the other vegetables - Peter complains the onions are too heavy to get back up the tree so Benjamin says they'll head for the gate, and some mice on a nearby wall stop to laugh at them.
At this point Peter is whining that he just wants to get back home. I wonder if he's still got a bit of a cold. Benjamin gets to the bottom of some steps, and when Peter stops to complain that Benjamin isn't helping, he accidentally drops the onions and a couple of them knock Benjamin over. Imagine an onion at that relative scale hitting you!
As the rabbits sneak towards the gate, they spot a cat. This one's brown - I'm not sure why it's not the same white one from before, as that would have made sense as foreshadowing, and both are on the McGregors' land. The two cousins sneak by and hide under an upturned basket, which ends up being a problem when the cat comes over and takes a nap on that same basket! There's a funny part where Peter seems to start to cry only for it to actually be the onions' fault, but then things feel a lot more ominous again as there's a slow zoom out from the cat and the basket to emphasise that they're not getting out from under there any time soon...
So it must be a lot later when we see Benjamin's father wondering where Benjamin is, and Josephine approaching him to ask if he's seen Peter. That makes up Benjamin's father's mind, and he says he reckons he knows where they are, waving his stick threateningly to indicate what their punishment will be. And Josephine is left there, crying... God, why did they have to go so emotional with this one?
Benjamin's father patrols the wall of the McGregors' garden, looking for the two cousins. When Benjamin sees him through the basket he calls "Father!", which gets his attention... but also wakes up the cat. Cue quite a vicious fight between the cat (a non-speaking animal) and Benjamin's father, who's almost as large as the cat, and armed, so he looks more dangerous than you might expect.
Eventually he manages to chase the cat into a greenhouse full of plants and lock it in, and so he's able to free Peter and Benjamin... and punish them. He says that this won't hurt him more than it hurts them, reversing a stereotypical old phrase, and then beats them both with the stick. This was acceptable child punishment in the 90s... in England it's still legal, even. But it looks very odd today and makes Benjamin's father feel like a much more unsympathetic character than intended.
Benjamin's father is easily able to carry the onions and open the gate, so getting back out of the garden is a lot easier. The mice and the robin laugh at the young rabbits as they're led away, and the cat meows from inside the greenhouse. We see the trio of rabbits heading home through the darkening scenery, as Benjamin's father continues to tell the boys off. Why does this not feel like a happy ending?
In Peter's house, his mother is reassuring his sisters that "Mr Bouncer" is looking for Peter. Wait, shouldn't Benjamin's father be Mr Bunny? Now I'm just confused.
Peter, Benjamin, and Mr Bouncer enter, and all of Peter's family seem more relieved to see him than annoyed - his sisters in particular all hug him, and his mother does berate him a little but not much. Mr Bouncer leaves with his son under his arm, and we go back to the live action section for the credits, Potter ending the narration by saying that McGregor never figured out why there were so many tiny shoe prints in his garden, or how the cat managed to lock herself in the greenhouse. I suppose with the shoe thing she's talking about McGregor not knowing about the other rabbits, since he already knows Peter wears shoes.
This show was sweet, emotional, and beautifully animated. There's not much that's bad that I could say about it.