Bad Penny (TV series)
A girl battles her family's schemes and portal visitors.
Bad Penny was a British children's TV show created by comedy writer Dean Wilkinson. The series, which aired 13 episodes across two seasons between 2003 and 2004, starred 17-year-old Anne Foy as the lead character, with comedian Graham Fellows (known as John Shuttleworth) playing her father.
Quick Facts
- Writer
- Dean Wilkinson
- Country
- United Kingdom
- Language
- English
- Series
- 2
- Episodes
- 13
- Network
- CBBC
- First aired
- 2003
- Last aired
- 2004
Facts from the source article.
Characters and plot
Penny Dreadful, played by Anne Foy, is a sweet-natured but troubled girl who spends her time trying to stop her eccentric family’s shady money-making schemes. Each episode throws her into chaos when odd visitors tumble out of her wardrobe, which sometimes acts as a portal to other dimensions. Among these bizarre guests are a foul-mouthed runaway scarecrow, a Dickensian rat-catcher hunting a giant rat named Lord Ironside, and Chips, a Geordie space-pilot dog in a plot lifted from the 1968 film Planet of the Apes. The show’s signature line, “This is a mad house, a mad house!”, borrowed from that same movie, appears once per episode. Its humor mixes slapstick with clever dialogue, offering Pythonesque self-contained stories, subplots, and quick, throwaway scenes.
Cast
The cast of Bad Penny featured a rotating group of regular actors who took on new roles each episode. Among them were Adrian Mills from That's Life!, Coronation Street's Martin Hancock, and Rusty Goffe, a character actor known for playing an Oompa-Loompa in the original Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory and a Jawa and a Droid in the first Star Wars. Goffe also appeared as Goober in Stupid!, another CBBC series written by Dean Wilkinson. Graeme Harper, who directed Doctor Who episodes in the 1980s and the 2006 series with David Tennant, directed the first season.
More in British Children's Science Fiction Television Series
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