Look and Read: Sky Hunter II
Sky Hunter II is a unit of the BBC schools TV series Look and Read from the 1990s, covering Language and Reading for primary school pupils.
This page about the Look and Read story Sky Hunter II is not yet finished.
But you can still read my old web pages about the story at the Internet Archive Wayback Machine on this link:
Look and Read.myby.co.uk - Sky Hunter II
Producer Sue Weeks, along with Charles Collingwood as Wordy, make their exit from Look and Read with a revival of the classic story Sky Hunter first shown in 1978.
After the extremely expensive Through The Dragon's Eye in 1989, the next Look and Read story needed to be reasonably cheap. So following the model of The Boy From Space, the 1970s story that was brought back with new teaching bits in the 1980s, they decided to revive one of the archive Look and Read stories and just give it new, updated teaching segments, with the idea that this would be quicker and cheaper than doing a whole new story. It was neither, and Sky Hunter II, intended to be launched in Spring 1991, was not completed until May of that year and did not reach screens until 1992.
The original child cast was brought back for this revival, and they joined Wordy to do the teaching bits, looking back on their past adventures. Jackie, Butch and Trevor are now in their late twenties and as a result of their exploits with Mr Trim and the peregrine, are working on a touring bus for the RSPB. Wordy joins them on this bus along with Derek Griffiths as an impertinent bird puppet, Jay. Oh, and also Jackie's cousin Sharon - who owned the boat the kids were staying on in Sky Hunter - has got married to the Birdman.
Episodes
The titles of episodes 4 and 9 were changed from the original Sky Hunter, I believe this was under advice from the reading consultant Mary Hoffman.
| # | Title | Broadcast |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | Strangers on the Canal | 14 Jan 1992 |
| 2. | For Sale | 21 Jan 1992 |
| 3. | The Birdman | 28 Jan 1992 |
| 4. | Too Many Crooks | 4 Feb 1992 |
| 5. | The Welsh Telegram | 11 Feb 1992 |
| 6. | Proof at Last | 18 Feb 1992 |
| 7. | A Friend in Need | 3 Mar 1992 |
| 8. | Where is Jackie? | 10 Mar 1992 |
| 9. | Trim's Tricks | 17 Mar 1992 |
| 10. | Back to the Wild | 24 Mar 1992 |
Credits
| Starring | Geoffrey Bayldon as Mr Charles Trim Luke Batchelor as Butch |
| Singers | Derek Griffiths Julie Stevens Jane Carr |
| Written by | Leonard Kingston |
| Music by | Roger Limb |
| Design | John Bone Colin Green Maggie Carroll |
| Reading consultants | Mary Hoffman Jane Bunting |
| Story director | Roger Tonge |
| Producer | Sue Weeks |
| Lyrics by | Rosanna Hibbert Mary Hoffman Gordon Snell |
| Film animation | Richard Taylor |
| Cosutme design | Dennis Brack Annie Harding |
| Make-up designer | Ann Pollard |
| Props buyer | Brenda Barker |
| Film cameraman | Colin Munn |
| PSC cameraman | Robert Pascall |
| PSC sound | Dick Manton |
| Sound | Bob Roberts Brian Clark |
| Film editor | John Lyte |
| Studio lighting | Duncan Brown |
| Resource co-ordinator | John Latus |
| CREW 1 | Peter Fox |
| Vision mixer | Graham Giles |
| Videotape editor | Mike Thomas |
| Video effects | Dave Jervis |
| Floor manager | Sharon Porter |
| Assistant floor manager | Clive Chenery |
| Production assistant | Amarjit Ram |
| With | The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds Forestry Commission |
Broadcasts
Here is a list of all of the broadcasts of this story on the BBC. Unless your teachers managed to get the video recorder to work, this is when you would have seen it in school. See the Schedules section for precise dates and times.
Sky Hunter II was scheduled to be shown on the CBBC Channel in Spring 2005, but due to a technical mix up where the wrong details were entered into the BBC's "transmission database", the original Sky Hunter was shown instead.
Sources
Assertions about the expense and original scheduling of this story in the introduction are given with reference to original scripts, recording dates given on the public version of the BBC Programme Catalogue and private research.
Assertions about the scheduling of this story on the CBBC Channel in the Broadcasts section are based on timetables released by the BBC and information received directly from the BBC.
Links
- BBC Programmes page for Sky Hunter II
- Sky Hunter II on the Internet Movie Database
- British Film Institute Collections for Sky Hunter II
More
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More Programmes
Some random programmes for age 7-9 from the 1990s
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| How We Used to Live | |
| ITV Schools, Channel 4 Schools | |
| 1968-2009 | |
| History |
| Words Alive! | |
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| 1996-2007 | |
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