Pippi calzelunghe

As a swedish kid born decades after the series was made, i can still say that this is such a classic. Rewatching it, i can still sing along to the songs(här kommer pippi långstrump! Tjolahopp tjolahej, tjolahoppsansa! With more) and still remember all my favorite and least favorite scenes (hate that prusiluskan), and love the adventure episode!) i will always love pippi and her antics, as she has always been a kind of odd role model to me. The nostalgia! A new discovery for me is the fact that this serie apparently is well known all over the world? I thought this was merely a swedish/scandinavian classic. Either way, i do not mind. Personally, the fact that pippi has influenced more people's lives makes me happy!

Created by Swedish author Astrid Lindgren, the powerful and independent little girl Pipi was never my mother's favorite role-model for her children. And since I always saw the show with her by my side, I learned not to enjoy the character's antics very much either. Pipi standing on furniture still makes me grunt, and I'm now in my fifties.

Still, the show was so much more than the main character, it was about the innocence of children and how they see and discover the world around them. In that, it succeeds fully!

Used to watch this series every Saturday morning on the french CBC network in Canada. Though the series was well dubbed in Belgium (and the movies were dubbed in Canada later...), it was the funniest and most original series ever come from Europe. It made me discover Sweden as well. It has an international touch in which the location would not matter here...

If Pippi (or Fifi in french) had a few tricks on her dress to avoid the cops or the old lady who wants to bring her to an orphanage, she was real kind to her best friends Tommy and Anika, and always was eager to help. And she loved her animals, especially her horse and the pet monkey.

I liked the first season due to its freshness and originality. The "pirates" one and the 3rd season are less interesting.

Wish there would be a DVD in French for this wonderful show...

Always loved Pippi as a child and still do to this day! I've always wondered who did the English voice dubs on the series?

This is the timeless (well almost) television series based on Astrid Lindgren's Pippi Långstrump books that is still seen all of the world today. Pippi lives on her own, has super-strength (and later on develops some more mutant abilities) and is prone to mood swings. Oh yes, she also lies all the time. Naturaly she befriends a brother and sister who are the exact opposite of her, Tommy & Annika: two squeaky clean blond haired model children who never did or said anything wrong their entire lives (till they met Pippi). Pippi gets around spending ducats left by her seafaring father, who used to be a pirate, but has recently become 'negro-king' on an unknown island (not very PC, but it's the late sixties). She also takes her monkey and horse almost everywhere.

All the best bits of this series were edited into a movie of the same name, in which Pippi's rascally nature was somewhat lessened by leaving out some of her nastier pranks while leaving in all the scenes where she prays to her departed mother. 1970 saw the production of another two movies: "Pippi Långstrump på de sju haven" and "På rymmen med Pippi Långstrump". The stories became even more far fetched and the three leads had obviously suffered from a growth spurt (Pippi's braids could not stick up straight anymore). These adventures were added to the TV series on each subsequent showing, bringing the total episode count up to 21. Last, and definitely least, some greedy producers took the material from the original series that had not been used in the first feature and crudely edited it together into a fourth film, "Här kommer Pippi Långstrump" (1973). The result was a bit of a mess, beginning with the final scenes from the first movie and then jumping back to stuff from the first episode.

There were no more new episodes produced after 1970 because the children were getting too old (and the stories too far fetched). But thanks to reruns and the series being dubbed into a thousand languages, Pippi is still very popular today, with both the series and the films receiving regular airplay (and available to buy). Although there have been other versions of the story before and after, most people will agree Inger Nilsson is the definitive Långstrump, and despite being a terrible role model, we can't help but love her. Children should learn the benefits of confidence and arrogance as soon as possible anyway.

8 out of 10