A Shorter History of the Guinea Pig in Showbiz.

‘Tales of the Riverbank’ was a  television series featuring a guinea pig, a hamster, a rat and other real live animals. Based on a rejected Canadian pilot (no sense of humour, the Americans) it was shot in a bucolic Wind-in-in-the-Willows setting in Britain. GP, the guinea pig, lived in a disused water mill, flew aeroplanes, and was an inventor. The adventures involved boats, cars and, in one episode, a cannon which blew something up. 

The pilot had been voiced by a Canadian, but thankfully the BBC recruited legendary actor Johnny Morris to provide proper English voices. Later, the Canadians reversed their rejection of the concept and bought the BBC series, shamefully re-voicing it with American accents. Possibly GP took on a New York taxi-driver’s accent, or that of a Boston academic. Perish the thought.

The makers of the show discuss its production in this Radio Solent broadcast.

I was a bit old when the series hit Australian screens; it was televised around dinner time, when my younger siblings were summoned, somewhat surreally going from from playing with real guinea pigs in the backyard to watching real guinea pigs on television. (GP, the lead guinea pig, bore an uncanny resemblance to my own guinea pig shown in an earlier post.)