The 'Truckers' series was superb.

- Terry Pratchett, February 1997.

Truckers, also known as Terry Pratchett's Truckers to differentiate it with various other television series of a similar name, was a 1992 stop-motion animated television series made by legendary British animation studio Cosgrove Hall . This was the first television adaptation of the work of renowned author Sir Terry Pratchett and is based on the first novel in Pratchett's Bromeliad trilogy.

Plot

You know the words of Arnold Bros (est 1905)! 'Everything Under One Roof.' Everything! Therefore there can be no Outside.

Masklin, Grimma and Granny Morkie and Old Torrit are the only surviving Nomes, small people about 4-inches tall who move, walk and talk ten times faster than humans, living next to a motorway. After seeing their friend Mr Mert being eaten by a fox, Masklin guides them onto a lorry which takes them to an old department store, called Arnold Bros (est. 1905). They carry few possessions, taking with them only an old relic they call the Thing, which is really the Navigational computer and flight recorder of a spacecraft that brought their distant ancestors to Earth 15,000 years before.

Inside the store they find a colony of Nomes whose religion is based around worshipping Arnold Bros (est 1905) and interpreting the store's rules and regulations as gospel. For instance, as the store's slogan is 'All things under one roof', the Store Nomes do not believe in the existence of anything outside. The Nomes live in perpetual fear of a fearsome monster called Prices Slashed, while Bargains Galore! is a common exclamation.

The Nomes are divided into different tribes reflecting the store's different departments, with only the Stationeri, the store's priesthood, allowed to read. Other departments include the del Icatessen who rule the food hall, the Ironmongri who use tools and electricity, the warlike, brightly-dressed Haberdasheri, their enemies the Millineri and Corsetri bandits. When the Nomes learn from the Thing that the Store is due to be demolished, these different tribes must, for the first time ever, all work together in order to steal a lorry and flee. For as Arnold Bros (est 1905) has said, Everything Must Go!

The television series follows the plot of Sir Terry Pratchett's novel quite closely. There are a few minor changes, though these are within the spirit of the original story. For instance, in the series in the beginning one of the Nomes named Mr Mert is seen being caught by a fox despite Masklin fighting the fox attempting to rescue him, while in the novel his death by fox is reported to Masklin when he returns from foraging for food.

Cast

Review

Everything Must Go

- The Book of Nome

Truckers was made by Thames Television's animation studio, Cosgrove Hall, and produced by Brian Trueman at the end of a golden age of British fantasy adaptations¹. Truckers was broadcast January – April 1992, the same year as the BBC's The Borrowers², which also featured the exploits of small people.

Cosgrove Hall was the animation studio most famous for such childhood classics as Danger Mouse and Count Duckula. It was very close in style to their similarly stop-motion classic The Wind in the Willows³ (1983-1990), which also featured Michael Hordern. Thames Television had been formed by a forced merger by the ITA⁴ of two ITV companies, ABC⁵ and Associated-Rediffusion in 1968. Thames were granted the lucrative London weekday ITV franchise and soon gained a reputation for making outstanding programmes.

Controversially, Thames Television lost the franchise rights to the London area, which from 1 January 1993 was instead covered by Carlton. Although Thames Television had intended Truckers to be merely the first series in a trilogy, after losing their federal franchise, plans to cover the remaining two books in Terry Pratchett's Bromeliad trilogy were abandoned.

The series consists of 13 ten-minute episodes, each beginning with a reprise showing what has gone before and an introduction by The Thing. This narration is very similar in style to that of The Book in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy television series. When the series was released on VHS it was edited into a feature-length omnibus edition, although the DVD release has restored the original episodic format.

Novelisation

A picture book novelisation based on the television series based on Terry Pratchett's book was released by Corgi books in 1992. This adopts a graphic novel format, using stills from the film and speech bubbles to tell the story. A Ladybird book was also released at the same time, using a combination of sentences and pictures.

Legacy

Truckers would not be the last Terry Pratchett adaptation that Cosgrove Hall would animate. In the 1990s the studio would animate two full Discworld novels, Soul Music and Wyrd Sisters, following a pilot episode entitled Welcome to the Discworld inspired by Reaper Man. Debra Gillett, who played Grimma, would play Susan in Soul Music.

Since 2001, DreamWorks Animation has owned the film rights to Terry Pratchett's Bromeliad trilogy.