Trivia / Postman Pat

• Acting for Two:
  • Ken Barrie voiced all the characters in the 1980s, including the females...
  • In the Dutch dub, Hildegard Van Nylen voices both Lizzy and Lauren.
• Creator Backlash: While John Cunliffe enjoyed writing the show, he voiced distain for a lot of the dumbed down tie-in books and merchandise as the show became popular, a lot of which he didn't have a hand in and believed handled the work poorly. He created Rosie and Jim as an alternate piece he had more creative control over, though still continued writing for Pat's 90s series and specials, multiple books, and contributed a couple stories for the 2004 revival.
• Creator's Favorite: Ivor Wood stated in an interview on the Channel 4 show Collector's Lot that his favorite character was Ted Glen.
• Exiled from Continuity: To Germany and Italy, anything from before 2003 isn't canon because the first two seasons didn't air there.
• He Also Did: John Cunliffe and Ivor Wood. The former went on to create a Ragdoll Productions TV series called Rosie & Jim, and the latter also did the animations for The Herbs, Paddington (1975) and the short-lived Bertha. Additionally, the studio that made Special Delivery Service is Cosgrove Hall, which also created Count Duckula, Noddy's Toyland Adventures, and the evergreen favorite Danger Mouse.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: The series is remarkably hard to come across in North America, as it was mostly released on VHS by Celebrity Home Entertainment's Just for Kids Home Video label. The only DVD release the series has ever got in North America is the CGI movie. The mid-2000s era episodes (with the other theme tune) aired on HBO Family and qubo for a while, though. With the advent of Peacock, almost all Postman Pat episodes are now available for streaming in the United States, with the first two seasons being suspiciously absent (making their absence even more conspicuous is the fact that the original stop-motion Noddy's Toyland Adventures episodes are on Peacock, along with Make Way For Noddy and Noddy In Toyland; Noddy, Toyland Detective is still held by Netflix).
• The 2003 series was dubbed in French but the dub is impossible to come by nowadays. The closest we've gotten is a video of the French version of the PS 2 game.
• No Export for You:
  • ABC, 123, and Read Along had no American dub. Few countries outside the UK actually received the said specials.
  • The first two seasons never aired in Germany or Italy, even though the BBC tried to get them airing there in the 90s.
• Non-Singing Voice: In the movie, Pat's singing voice is provided by Ronan Keating, who also appears as himself auditioning for You're The One in the beginning.
• The Other Darrin:
  • Starting from Postman Pat Takes The Bus, Carole Boyd, a famous actress, took over voicing all the females and children except Granny Dryden, who was still played by Ken Barrie.
  • Ken Barrie played the role of Pat until 2008, when he was replaced by Lewis MacLeod for the "Special Delivery Service" era, although he still retained his supporting roles as Ted, Alf, PC Arthur Selby and Reverend Peter Timms. He was dropped from the show completely in 2013, with Mac Leod now voicing Alf, Bradley Clarkson now voicing Ted and Selby, and Dan Milne now voicing Timms.
• Playing Against Type: David Tennant as Wilf in the movie. While he normally plays/voices mild-mannered and nice characters (with the occasional villain or jerk), he voices a music manager who doesn't play fair when it comes to a competition and tries very hard to stop Pat from winning the talent competition.
• Recursive Adaptation: Read Along With Postman Pat adapts a couple of storybooks to screen.
• Screwed by the Lawyers: Royal Mail dropped Postman Pat as their mascot in 2000, and as such, Pat's van no longer has the Royal Mail logo on it.
• Screwed by the Network: The show was rejected German and Italian broadcasts in the 90s.
• Sequel Gap: The original first season was made in 1981. Though a lot of books and tie-in media were made in the years following, it wouldn't be until 1991, a decade later, that more episodes of the show would be made, consisting of four feature length cartoons and finally a second season in 1996. Another special would be made in 2003, which served as a lead in to a revival series the following year. Seasons three to five were ongoing, though Special Delivery seasons had breaks of three to four years between each.
• Technology Marches On:
  • In the later seasons, characters use mobile phones and emails replace letters.
  • In "Postman Pat's Rainy Day", Bill Thompson's radio-controlled model aeroplane is an interesting comparison to battery-powered drones used nowadays. Only serious model aircraft enthusiasts these days would fly a model biplane with a petrol engine.
  • In "Postman Pat and the Barometer", the barometer in question warns Pat about potential snow hitting Greendale, and almost everyone else believes it's not going to happen, with stuff like TV and radio (or Ted's computer in the audiobook adaptation of the episode) stating against the thought. However, Pat is ultimately proven right when it does start snowing during the day, proving that even the Met Office can get their facts incorrect on occasion.
• Uncredited Role: It is actually unknown who voices Brad Lee, since his name is left uncredited and it doesn't sound like he was voiced by one of the main male voice actors of the series.
• What Could Have Been: There are a decent amount of things in the movie that didn't make the cut:
  • Wilf, Sara, and Simon Cowbell were originally going to be voiced by different voice actors very early in production.
  • Pat's Non-Singing Voice was originally going to be provided by Gary Barlow, but he was replaced for unknown reasons.
  • The 2011 storyboard reel and the first draft of the film has the same plot, but it is entirely different in comparison to the final version. The reason why the film had to be rewritten was because according to the director, the writing was bad for a full-length film. Imagine what would happen if the first draft made it to the final cut...
  • Speaking of 2011, when this film was first announced, the animation would've originally combined stop-motion animation and CGI instead of being fully computer-animated like in the final version, which would've been impressive.
  • According to this article, the Postman Pat movie would've been made as far back as a decade earlier if the big movie companies said so!

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