| Towser | |
|---|---|
| Genre | Animation |
| Created by | Tony Ross |
| Written by | Tony Ross |
| Narrated by | Roy Kinnear |
| Theme music composer | Duncan Lamont |
| Composer | Duncan Lamont |
| Country of origin | United Kingdom |
| Original language | English |
| No. of series | 1 |
| No. of episodes | 26 |
| Production | |
| Producer | Clive Juster |
| Editor | David McKee |
| Running time | 5 minutes |
| Production company | King Rollo Films |
| Original release | |
| Network | ITV |
| Release | 11 September – 16 October 1984 |
Towser is a British series of children's books created by veteran children's writer and illustrator Tony Ross and published by Anderson Press. The series is about an intelligent dog, Towser, and his friends The King, Dr. Smelly, and Sadie; and a variety of adversaries such as the Terrible Thing, the Water Rats, and Goblin Gobble.
The book series spawned an animated television series narrated by Roy Kinnear and made by British animation studios King Rollo Films (best known for making well known animated works for children such as King Rollo, Mr Benn and Spot) for ITV Central which ran for one season of 26 episodes. It was made in 1982 and aired on ITV as part of Children's ITV on 11 September 1984 and ending on 16 October on the same year. The series was also repeated on ITV in 1988 for a short while and aired one last time in August of that year as part of the summer morning programming on Children's ITV. Towser later aired on Channel 4 in 1990 and was shown as part of their block of classic children's television series Take 5 in 1994 along with other children's programmes that had previously aired on other networks such as Paddington, Mio Mao, The Magic Roundabout, Willo the Wisp, Tales of the Riverbank, Mr Men, Fred Basset, Ivor the Engine and Roobarb. It has also been broadcast on cable television on The Children's Channel and was shown there numerous of times from 1985 to 1996.
Towser was later joined by King Rollo Films' other television programmes Mr Benn, King Rollo and Victor and Maria and both of them aired with a 40-minute compilation programme called Play It Again. The theme song was sung by jazz and blues singer George Melly.
Towser also aired in several different countries such as ABC TV in Australia (it first aired on the ABC in early 1984 several months before its UK television debut), TV One and TV2 in New Zealand, TV2, TV3 and M-Net in South Africa, XEIPN-TV 11 in Mexico, Channel 5 in Singapore (as part of Play It Again), NTA in Nigeria and Nickelodeon (being shown on the Nick Jr. series Eureeka's Castle) and Cartoon Network (being shown on the children's anthology series Small World) in the US.
All 26 episodes of the show were released on DVD in the UK by Demand DVD in 2013.
*This was broadcast as the 26th and final episode
**Despite being the final episode, this was broadcast as the very first one