The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (TV Series) - Description

Description

For at least three generations of UK children this was the definitive TV version of Daniel Defoe's classic novel. After its debut in 1965 it soon became a staple part of the BBC's school summer holiday schedules. Often stripped daily, Mondays to Fridays, in the mid '70s, it was last screened in the early 1980s, after which the BBC's contract for repeat screenings expired. It is the story of a young Englishman's struggle for survival on an unknown desert island, and his recollections of his adventures prior to the shipwreck that brought him there, in particular his involvement with slave traders. He has his pet dog Dick, a parrot and a goat for company. In the latter half of the story a group of cannibals arrive on his island; he repels them by means of explosives, and in the process rescues a native from becoming their next meal; he names him Friday. In the end he comes to terms with his less than exemplary past, and becomes a better man thanks to his experiences on the island, befriending Friday and putting his life in order.

The serial was filmed on Gran Canaria, the 3rd largest of the Canary Islands, off the coasts of Portugal and Morocco. Robinson's Island locations were shot at Playa del Ingles on the southern tip of Gran Canaria; the Moroccan scenes were filmed further along the coast at Playa de Maspalomas and the Dunes of Maspalomas; the small village of Tejeda located inland at the notional centre of Gran Canaria was used as the location for Robinson's Plantation in Brazil. Most of this footage was shot mute because of the lack of dialogue and the time it saved on location, the sound being dubbed on later. The English locations (York/Hull) were shot in Normandy, France. The filming took four months to complete. For the Gran Canaria footage a small 11 man film crew was used, all of whom also played small parts in the serial, such as assistant director Luc Andrieux who took the part of Kasir the fishmonger. This was Austrian, Salzburg-born, actor Robert Hoffmann's first professional acting job after leaving the French actors school in Paris in 1964. (In Defoe's novel Crusoe is only 27, and his father a German émigré from Bremen, surnamed Kreutznaer, Crusoe, an anglicization of this name.)

Franco London Film made three different cuts of the show available—a four-part version, a six-part version and a thirteen-part version—to accommodate the broadcasting requirements of countries buying the serial. The success of this production led to a series of 16 French/German co-production adaptations of classic adventure and children's novels between 1964 and 1983, for ZDF and ORTF in France.(These serials are known by German fans as the ZDF four parters.) The man behind these mini epics was German producer/writer Walter Ulbrich. Franco London Film, in association with Deropa Films (Germany), were involved in the next four serials: Don Quixote the Man of La Mancha, produced by Walter Ulbrich and Henry Deutschmeister in 1965 (the last to be made in monochrome); Die Schatzinsel/L'ile au Tresor in 1966, an adaptation of Treasure Island that starred English actor Ivor Dean as Long John Silver; Les Aventures de Tom Sawyer in 1968 (broadcast in 13 parts on BBC1 from 1970 to 1974); and finally Die Lederstrumpf Erzahlungen an adaptation of James Fenimore Cooper's novels featuring Natty Bumppo, collectively known as The Leatherstocking Tales, (including The Last of the Mohicans) in 1969.

The serial is known to have been dubbed into German, English, French and Italian. Currently no official copies of the Italian dub are known to exist.