Rezension von menschmachine

In addition to that rather excellent summary, Pat & Mat are very well known in the Netherlands as 'Buurman & Buurman' (Neighbour & neighbor). At first they were broad casted in their original format (without speech), 49 episodes were re-broad casted in the early nineties overdubbed with ad-hoc voices provided by Dutch actors Simon van Leeuwen and Kees Prins. This added in no small way to the humor of the original series. For nostalgic purposes the original Czech title 'Aje to' ('that's all') was turned in to their payoff at the end of each episode.

The series has had a an amazing number of reruns. Buurman and Buurman still has numerous fan clubs on the internet. And in 2007 'Buurman & Buurman' was voted the most popular item in the fully packed Sunday morning show Villa Achterwerk, the best-watched children's program of the time. DVD's of all seasons are readily available and just now (march 2009) a 6-dvd-box with all 63 episodes is in the sjop.

To me the most amazing accomplishment of the series is, it appeals to all ages, which is quite uncommon for animation. I ran into a party in a dorm once, where Buurman and Buurman had a continuous run. And now i'm watching it with my kids, 3 and 10 years old, who love it as much as their dad.

The humor is very slapstick, and most of the fun is in anticipating the mayhem which is always a bit more over the top than you expect. Obviously the overall look of the earlier episodes is quite 'eastern Europe', and it's great this campy look has survived in the later series.