Skippy

This show, which revolves around an Australian bush kangaroo, is best described as Australia's "Gentle Ben" Television show. The show has the same story lines of a ranger, his son, their pet kangaroo, and the misadventures they get into. I like the show, as corny as it is, probably because it does remind me of other late 60's & early 70's adventure shows that I grew up with. If you like "Gentle Ben", "Flipper", "Lassie" and "Daktori!", you'll have fun with this Show.

As a kid growing up in West Australia in the late 60s this was one of the few TV shows I watched that was Australian. For the most part Aussie kids grew up watching American and British TV series and thinking that dolphins could talk, doctors could time-travel and birds flew south for the winter. All that changed when Skippy hopped into our lives and gave us Australian stories, Australian settings, Australian accents and Australian heroes. I had a Skippy cup, Skippy plate and insisted my Skippy Peanut Butter sandwiches and milk were served with them. We loved Skippy and were very proud when we discovered that the rest of the world loved Skippy too. The show was dubbed into 25 languages and was shown in 128 countries, something we Aussies didn't think possible for an Aussie TV show. We had thought that to be successful meant selling our TV shows to the American and British networks where our accent was believed to be a liability. At that time if an Aussie film or TV show made it to American audiences it was usually dubbed with American accented voices (Mad Max) or perceived as a British product. What Skippy demonstrated was that an Australian series could be successful beyond the American and British markets. Consequently Australian TV producers gained the confidence to produce more Aussie TV series knowing that they could sell them successfully to parts of the world where our strange accent wasn't an issue. Today the Aussie TV industry exports significantly more than it imports., particularly in children's programming. While Skippy is showing its age today, it's high production values, imaginative scripts and cultural integrity made it a quality product for its time. While it will always be a sentimental childhood favourite for most Aussies, it should also be remembered for its role as a catalyst for the establishment of a viable Australian TV & Film industry. It seems today that an Aussie accent is an asset in Hollywood and a talking kangaroo had more than a little to do with it.

This series is timeless. It will be watched in 100 years time.

You cannot get back to the innocent 50's 60's of Australian National Park life because there are so many people these days and so few animals.

This was made in the early years of TV when TV's were just becoming accessible to all in Australia. It no doubt helped popularise Australia.

Unfortunately Australia is no longer a quirky low populated part of world-it is modern country with large and complex cities with almost non-stop 24 hour activity.

Give me back my simple childhood days of coming home from school and watching Skippy or re-runs of Skippy.

I was even too young to appreciate Lisa Goddard as the 16-17 yo Englsih girl.

God bless all creatures great and small like Skippy the Bush Kangaroo.

I recently stumbled upon Skippy again after not seeing it for 40+ years and I still love it. I used to pretend that Clancy, Mark and Sonny were my siblings and Skippy was mine too. I thought Clancy was beautiful and envied her her long blonde hair. I also had a crush on Matt Hammond, completely overlooking the eye-candy helicopter pilot, but I was only 7, what did I know? It's a nice, fun little show that modern parents can watch with their kids and not worry about what they're seeing, and can also show modern kids that things managed to get done without smart phones or the Internet. They might also find Sonny's homeschooling via two-way radio interesting, too.

I remember watching Skippy when I was little. It was in syndication here in the U.S. back in the late '60s and early '70s. Skippy was a kangaroo. There was one episode in which Mike Hammond had to dart a wild kangaroo to relocate it away from a populated area.

Sonny, Mike's son, didn't want him to shoot Skippy by mistake.

Mike's love interest in the show was Clarissa "Clancy" Merrick. I haven't seen the new series.