Pat & Mat

This American was introduced to these Czech characters by her Korean students. It doesn't transcend culture much more than that!

As a die-hard Buster Keaton fan I was hooked in an instant. The relationship between Pat and Mat is as warm, mischievous, and trouble-prone as between the characters Buster created on screen with his mentor, Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle. Pat and Mat are friends and neighbors for whom the most ordinary of tasks, such as opening a can of goulash, trigger cascades of mishaps. Like Keaton, Mat and Pat somehow always manage to land on their feet in the end, even if they never achieve their original goals.

The gags themselves are so purely and perfectly Keatonesque that I feel as if The Great Stone Face himself must have somehow passed a bit of his elfin, tinkering spirit to Lubomir Benes and his team to nurture, play with, and make truly their own. The granddaddy of silent comedy would be proud indeed to see where Pat and Mat have taken the art form, to delightful new heights.

Pat and Mat will entertain adults and children in equal measure, and like Keaton's work, will remain fresh and funny for generations.

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.

I never thought I would see somthing that came straight from the heavans. I was wrong. Before I saw this show I was a Athiest. Now I go to church and thank god for this gift. This show is so perfect that no mere mortals can watch it. Only beings with a IQ of 600 can truly understand this show and its meaning. I believe this is the best show in existance and nothing will surpass this gift from the gods.

When I was little and I watched a movie that was scary, I always watched a few episodes before going to bed. And when I was sick and had Covid, it was the only thing that I could watch because it's simple and not too busy.

This gem, made in Czechoslovakia, was played in late 70s, 80s and 90s, mostly in communist and ex-communist countries. The cartoons were so good, that new series were made until recently and are still played on local TVs.

The premise is simple. Two friends with tendency to corrupt working devices and accidentally damage their fine built living habitat, use their creative thinking and lots of improvisation to repair the damage or regain functionality of broken objects. The series usually ends while testing their new achievement and making the distinctive handshake.

Let me just introduce one part I find particularly funny: while repairing the parquet floor, the two characters find the self propelling polishing machine fun to ride on, and each using their own, start chasing each other. After they find that using usual electrical socket makes them entangled in cables, they simply remove the light in the room and use its wiring to power the polish-machines :) After they get enough of chasing, the parquet-floor is unfortunately already used all the way down to concrete.

The show doesn't contain talking and the plots are simple enough for even the smallest kids to understand. Next to that, the plots something I dub "bringing up the technical spirit" :) But what really stands out is the ingenuity behind the plots that usually makes the viewer almost fall out of chair.

A feature that also needs to be noted is harmonica-played soundtrack that is know pretty much all over eastern Europe.

The series are known and viewed by young and old. And are a lovely part of my childhood. This show really does raise the bar to example of how it should be done. Makers of the show, I humbly salute you!