Episodes
In the original British production, Robbie was voiced by Ardal O'Hanlon and was narrated by Robbie Williams. Other voices were provided by Jane Horrocks, Steve Coogan, Paul Whitehouse, Harry Enfield, Jeff Goldblum, David Attenborough (as himself), Alistair McGowan and Ricky Gervais, among others. The director was Richard Goleszowski of Aardman Animations. Though not technically an Aardman production, several of the company's staff did work on the project, hence its heavily Aardman-esque visual style. The executive producer was Richard Curtis.
The programme was first shown in the United States on Fox Family with the original British voices until 2001. CBS then acquired the rights and began airing the special in 2002. However, the program was redubbed with American accents. Ben Stiller voiced Robbie, while other voices included Hugh Grant (as Blitzen; Blitzen was the only character to retain a British accent), Britney Spears (Donner), Leah Remini (Vixen), James Belushi (Santa Claus), Dick Enberg (Des Yeti), Dan Dierdorf (Allan Snowman), Brad Garrett (Prancer), and Stiller's father Jerry (Old Jingle and a talking garbage bag). Airplay of this version was discontinued by CBS after the 2005 holiday season; it has not been seen since. Nicktoons Network aired the original British version for the next two years, meaning CBS likely either lost or gave up the rights to the special after the breakup of CBS Corporation and Viacom. Neither version currently has a broadcast home in the United States.
Read more about this topic: Robbie The Reindeer
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“What is a novel if not a conviction of our fellow-men’s existence strong enough to take upon itself a form of imagined life clearer than reality and whose accumulated verisimilitude of selected episodes puts to shame the pride of documentary history?”
—Joseph Conrad (1857–1924)
“Twenty or thirty years ago, in the army, we had a lot of obscure adventures, and years later we tell them at parties, and suddenly we realize that those two very difficult years of our lives have become lumped together into a few episodes that have lodged in our memory in a standardized form, and are always told in a standardized way, in the same words. But in fact that lump of memories has nothing whatsoever to do with our experience of those two years in the army and what it has made of us.”
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