Murun Buchstansangur

Murun Buchstansangur was a series of animated shorts produced by Bevanfield Films for the TV station Channel 4 in the United Kingdom. It comprised fifty-two episodes; each was written, directed and narrated by Timothy Forder.

The title character was a small creature – with no body as such, he had arms and legs directly attached to his head, and had greyish-blue skin with a mop of brown hair. He wore brown clogs and a wristwatch. Murun lived in the kitchen of a rather dreary house in an unspecified town where it seemed to rain almost constantly. Curiously, given that he lived in a human-scale house, very few full-sized human characters were featured in the cartoon. While many of Murun’s acquaintances had human form, they were, in almost every case, the same height as Murun himself. However, a full-sized human character, Nigel, featured in just one episode. As he was so much taller than Murun, all that was seen of him were his legs and feet, like Mammy Two-Shoes in the Tom and Jerry cartoons by MGM.

The series was notable for its oblique, downbeat tone. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given his surroundings, Murun was a somewhat melancholy, philosophical character, though he was not lonely – in fact he had quite a large number of friends, neighbours, family members and acquaintances. Rather than Murun having exciting adventures, the narrative of each episode usually centred around a problem or dilemma that Murun would ponder, sometimes helped by his friends and relatives.