NOS News•today, 2:38 PM
Sound & Vision in Hilversum has four episodes of the popular youth series Can you tell me the way to Hamelin, sir? found. “A unique find of historical value,” according to the media museum, “because this makes the series complete again and secured for the future.”
In the 1970s, the popular Dutch series kept an entire generation of children glued to the TV. The series is based on the German fairy tale of the Pied Piper of Hamelin and is about a group of children. Together with a number of adults, they try to find their way back to the German village of Hamelin.
Rob de Nijs, Ida Bons, Loeki Knol, Ab Hofstee and Martin Brozius played the leading roles. There were major supporting roles for John Lanting, Leen Jongewaard, Hetty Blok, Berend Boudewijn and Rita Corita. The series consisted of 45 episodes and more than a hundred songs by Joop Stokkermans.
Black and white
Last year, Sound & Vision received the archive of technician Barry van der Sluis. It turned out to contain recording tapes of the writer of the series: Harrie Geelen. The writer had recorded the series on an Akai VT100, a black-and-white video system.
These black-and-white video tapes were transferred to VHS tapes in the late 1980s and subsequently ended up in the Van der Sluis archive. Four episodes on Akai tape, which have now surfaced, turned out to have never been made into VHS copies. Those four episodes were therefore always considered lost, until now.
In the near future, the media museum will digitize all black-and-white Akai tapes, so that the series will be complete after fifty years.
In the archives of Sound & Vision there are only six episodes that still have the original broadcast quality in color. “The rest has been washed over,” says Jennemiek Leijssen of the museum.
Just like for example Yes Sister No Sister the series was recorded on Ampex tapes. These tires were often reused due to the high costs. As a result, a lot of material was lost.
Below is a small impression of what the episodes looked like in color:
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ANP Kippa
Ab Hofstee (left), Rob de Nijs, Loeki Knol and Martin Brozius (right) -
ANP Kippa
Marnix Kappers, Ab Hofstee and Martin Brozius -
ANP Kippa
Ab Hofstee, Martin Brozius, Rob de Nijs and Ida Bons -
ANP Kippa
Six years ago Geelen talked about how television in those years was bound by the laws of cardboard sets. “Almost nothing was possible in such a series at the time,” he said at the time NOS With an Eye on Tomorrow. “Sets had to be crammed into a studio measuring 15 by 15 meters. Then you couldn’t have characters walk along ravines or along long forest avenues.”
That made no difference to the popularity of the children’s series. At its peak, there were approximately four million viewers per episode.
