Subscribe!Wolves, Witches & Giants (1995)
Originally posted on 10 January 2026First episode title: The Wolf & the Seven Kids
How familiar with the show am I?: I had never heard of it.
This is one of those shows that's a completely separate story each week - we've managed to go quite a while without seeing any of those! - and this one focuses on humorous adaptations of fairy tales, all narrated by the legendary Spike Milligan who also provides all the voices.
There's an opening section which I assume is mostly the same in every episode, explaining the premise of the show, focusing on the fact that all these folk tales will always involve an evil wolf, witch, or giant in some magical setting. The medieval fantasy vibe of the area shown is then abruptly and intentionally spoiled when the narrator says that the villain of this story will be the wolf, who drives through the scene in a blue car!
"The Wolf & the Seven Kids" isn't a fairy tale that I'm familiar with, but it does of course exist, and the other episodes of this show cover a lot of the more well-known fairy tales between them.
The story starts by telling us that there was once a nanny goat (as in, female goat) who lived with her seven kids (as in, young goats) in a cottage. Most of the narration in this is quite over the top but this first line is especially exaggerated. Two woodcutters walk by the house and the mother goat overhears them talking about a wolf lurking around the nearby forest. The narrator tells us that wolves like to eat goats, especially young ones, as we see the wolf himself peek around from behind a tree, looking towards the house. All of the animals in this are depicted as bipedal, by the way, and the goats wear some amount of clothing, though the wolf goes nude.
Later, the mother goat is preparing to go into town and gathers the kids around her to talk to them, while she rocks back and forth in a rocking chair like an old woman. When she speaks, she has a bleating goat-like voice. She tells the children to keep the door locked and to look out for the wolf. You can recognise the wolf, she tells them, by his big black paws and gruff voice. Yes, I think those are the main properties of a wolf. Then she leaves the house on her bike, and a kid, who will get referred to as the eldest later, locks the door behind her. We'll be seeing a lot of this entrance area of the house, which, besides the door, features a window and a grandfather clock.
So we cut to even later, when the wolf decides to sneak towards the house. Inside, all of the kids have apparently decided to play right near the entrance to the house where you would think they would be getting in each other's way! I guess it's a convenient way of keeping all seven kids in view for our benefit. The wolf knocks on the door and they look around - the wolf claims to be their mother with a present for them, putting on a headscarf for no-one's apparent benefit but his own since the kids can't see him. The wolf, of course, is given a gruff voice, and the kids are not fooled. The eldest kid tells him how they know he's the wolf, which is a stupid thing to do if you think about it.
Narrator: The wolf had to admit he did have a gruff voice.
Wolf: I've got a gruff voice.
That's rather literal! Then he laughs to himself sneakily, and drives off in that same blue car from the opening, into town. Yep, the wolf actually does get to have a car!
The wolf walks into a chemist's shop. Along with the car, there's no pretence of a traditional fairy tale setting here - the chemist's looks modern, full of medications in plastic containers, and the chemist himself is wearing a white lab coat. He speaks to the wolf in an Indian accent, something Spike Milligan used a lot in his comedy since he was born and grew up in India, not that he would be likely to get away with it if he was here to do it today. The wolf says that he needs medicine for his throat, claiming that he has lost his son and made his throat hoarse calling for him. I'm not sure why the wolf thinks he needs a sad backstory to be able to get some medicine, but anyway, the chemist gives him a bottle of something and he chugs it down.
He goes back to the goats' cottage and knocks on the door again. He once more claims to be the kids' mother, in a slightly less gruff voice than before. He puts on an apron, just as unnecessarily as with the headscarf last time, and also looks directly at the camera and says to never trust a chemist, for some reason. Don't give that message to the children watching!
The youngest kid is about to open the door when the eldest reminds him about the other sign of a wolf, the big black paws, and asks the "mother" to put one paw up against the window. The wolf puts his paws to the window, and, well, he's actually grey in the animation, but the eldest kid objects that their mother has white paws and that this is the wolf again. Stop telling the wolf exactly how he can trick you!
The wolf drives back to the town again and this time walks into a baker's. The baker has a German accent. No particular reason. The wolf once again claims to have lost his son, and this time says that he's been stepping on all sorts of sharp things while searching and wants some dough on his paws to protect them. What's weird is that he's presenting his front paws just as he did at the cottage, but, as mentioned, the animals in this are bipedal so he never steps anywhere with those paws! The paws look white enough with the dough, but then the wolf asks the baker if he can add some flour to them. The baker doesn't want to, so the wolf grabs him and tells him to do it or he'll eat him. It's like he just remembered he's a wolf and he can get what he wants through violence! So, the baker does what he's told.
Once again he approaches the cottage and claims to be the kids' mother, and once again the eldest asks to see his paws. The white paws that are placed against the window are way bigger than any of the goats' hooves, but the children are still tricked successfully! They open the door and then are startled to see the wolf, and they scatter around the house. They try to hide but the wolf crashes through everything and eats the kids, swallowing them whole! I of course don't know the story, so I wasn't expecting any of them to actually get eaten. The wolf discards the dough hands and then walks away from the house, not knowing that there was still one kid left - the youngest, hiding inside that grandfather clock that has been there this whole time.
The mother goat arrives back at the house and is shocked to see the state that the house is in, and to not see her kids. Despite the silliness of the story, it's hard not to see that nanny goat and feel the pain of someone not knowing what has happened to their children. And yet it's followed up by this absolutely absurd joke that I love, when the mother goat calls out for her children:
Narrator: A muffled cry came from the grandfather clock.
Youngest kid: It's seven fifteen!
The mother opens the clock and the kid tells her what happened, and then they set off, the narrator telling us that the mother is going to "seek revenge". Are we sure this is a fairy tale? They find the wolf asleep, and the mother notices a struggling movement in the wolf's stomach - because he had swallowed the kids whole, they are still alive in there! Ahh, so that's why this show could so casually portray them being eaten.
The nanny goat is surprised but then quickly tells the kid to run back to the cottage and get scissors, needle, and thread. He does so, and then the mother uses the scissors to cut open the wolf's stomach - not portrayed as gruesomely as it could be, of course - and the rest of the kids jump out, completely unharmed. Don't question it. The wolf stays fast asleep through all of this, of course.
The mother tells all the kids to gather heavy stones, which they do, and then she puts them all into the wolf's stomach hole and sews it back up again. And he still remains asleep! The goats have gone by the time the wolf does wake up. Somehow the fact that he is full of rocks now is not immediately apparent to him.
He says he's thirsty and starts to walk, and now that he's moving and the stones are rattling in his belly, he complains that the kids must not have been tender enough. Everyone in this story except possibly the mother goat seems somewhat unobservant but I guess that's just how fairy tales work. The wolf reaches a well, which he bends down into in order to drink from it, but the weight of the stones pushes him over the edge and he falls in!
And so of course, they all lived happily ever after. The family are back at the cottage again and we're told that they never had to lock the door again, except when the income tax man was due, and we see the wolf show up wearing a hat, knocking on the door and claiming to be the income tax man. Yes, I know it's a random absurd joke to finish the episode, but how did the wolf survive the well? Also the mention of income tax all of a sudden makes me wonder what the nanny goat does for a living.
This episode was fair enough for what it was, but I'm slightly disappointed that a show narrated by Spike Milligan doesn't have as much of his trademark surreal humour as it could. I suppose it's a less extreme case of what happened with Little Lulu, where having a famous comedian as your lead actor is only any good if they're also writing it. The moral of the story is... chew your food!