Heidi (2015 TV series)

Heidi (also known as "Heidi 3D")
Genre	Drama
Created by	Jan Van Rijsselberge (of the series itself) Christel Gonnard (writing bible) Johanna Spyri (base novel)
Written by	Laurent Auclair Christel Gonnard Jean-Rémi François Sophie Decroisette (participating writer) and twelve others[1]
Voices of	Nathalie Homs (narrator) Emmylou Homs Benoît Allemane Lucille Boudonnat Vania Pradier Gilduin Tissier
Theme music composer	French theme song: Music: David Vadant Romain Allender Patrick Sigwalt Lyrics: Sophie Decroisette International theme song: Music: Johan Vanden Eede Lyrics: Gert Verhulst Hans Bourlon Alain Vande Putte
Opening theme	"Heidi" (the name of both theme songs)
Composer(s)	David Vadant Romain Allender Patrick Sigwalt
Country of origin	France Switzerland Belgium Australia
Original language(s)	French
No. of seasons	1
No. of episodes	39
Production
Producer(s)	Katell France
Running time	23 minutes (approx. per episode)
Production company(s)	Studio 100 Animation Rai Fiction Heidi, Pyld
Release
Original release	2007 (Swiss first airing) January 11, 2015 – January 24, 2016
External links
Website

Heidi is a Swiss-French animated children's TV series, based indirectly on Heidi by Johanna Spyri.^[2] The original 2007 television series was a Swiss-French-Italian-Australian co-production in 27 episodes of 26 minutes. A "remake" (rather than a re-telling) of Heidi, Girl of the Alps, much of the story is the same; the titular character is a then-five-year-old girl, who's taken to her grandfather on the Swiss Alps by her aunt, Dete to live with him and while the girl ends up improving his life, she also befriends Peter, the goatherd of the village Dorfli below and the one who causes her to find a big passion of hers, goats and other animals in general. But in this version, there is also a trio, Therese, William and Thomas, who usually try to do something that would downgrade Peter, whom they often refer to as a mountain goat, in some way or another. But in the first winter up there, a letter is eventually gotten and what results from there will end up changing another's life, as well.

The series has been distributed in 138 countries around the world.

Characters

The actors cited are from the Australian cast.

• Heidi (voiced by Monique Hore): The title character, a cute and innocent orphan girl, who grows from five to eight years old over the series, like its base, as well as the base novel.
• Heidi's grandfather (voiced by Peter McAllum): An angerable and turned-grump old man.
• Peter (voiced by Nicole Shostak): Young goatherd.
• Aunt Dete (voiced by Beth Armstrong): Heidi's mother's sister, who forcibly leaves Heidi with her grandfather and shows sacchranine self-righteousness with those around her, including her own niece. She works as a partly cooking maid in the Sesemann household, with bulter Sebastian who she eventually falls in love with and marries, though where is not actually specified.
• Theresa (voiced by Charlotte Hamlyn):
• William (voiced by Charlotte Hamlyn):
• Thomas (voiced by Jamie Croft): A short and obese member of the trio-turned-duo, tends to be distracted by thoughts of food and gets easily filled with fear and has a goat owned by his own family.
• Clara Sesemann (voiced by Sophia Morrison):
• Josef: Heidi's grandfather's Saint Bernard.
• Miss Rottenmeier (voiced by Beth Armstrong): The Sesemann household's villainous and governess, who has an overblown worry of Clara's health, focus on the kids' education and reactions towards animals (though whom she has an allergy of), highly conformist and attemptively enforcing of it, the most on "Adeleide" (Heidi), and refuses other's opinions more often than not, in useless stubbornness.
• Sebastian (voiced by Jamie Croft): The Sesemann household's butler.
• Mr. Sesemann (voiced by Peter McAllum): Clara's father.
• Alda: Therese's mother.
• Tobias: Heidi's deceased father, who never built the Devil Bridge over a mountain gap he and his son worked on.
• Mr. Keller (voiced by Peter McAllum, Jamie Croft)
• Mrs. Keller (voiced by Nicole Shostak)
• Briggite (voiced by Beth Armstrong)
• Grandmother (voiced by Beth Armstrong)
• Barble (voiced by Kate Fitzpatrick)
• Grandmama (voiced by Penny Cook)
• Mr. Bakker: A frustratable home school teacher who excessively punishes Heidi for her confusions and whose own teaching method includes torture involving physical pressure, the latter mentioned which gets him fired from teaching at Sesemann's.

Production

On the behalf of ZDF, one of the series' co-producers, with the intention of renewing Heidi, Girl of the Alps and fellow series to the modern children's audience, the series was produced from 2013–14, mainly in France, that much like Maya the Bee and Vicky the Viking before, including being done by the same main studio, on the behalf of ZDF, but in this production, multiple other companies, including the Australia-based, specifically-made Heidi Pyl, joined in on making the series.

In the first production, from the writing bible, written by Christel Gonnard, was the first twenty-seven episodes first had their locations shot with high-definition footage, for reference to the animators making the now-fictionalized locations of the series, in Haute-Savoie for the Alps (referred to as that, rather than the Alm, as in the base series and novel) and in Friborg for Frankfurt, similarly to Zuyio (later Nippon)'s team shooting pictures of the official locations themselves, for the setting references to background painters and writers, for the base series. The two halves that happened to be made in that production were directed, respectively, by Pierre-Antoine Hiroz and Anne Deluz. The theme music was two songs at the time; the credits song, replaced by a bit of a piece of background music from the series, when the series was bought the rights out of, was sung by Cindy Santos, first known in 2006, when she participated in the French show Nouvelle Star.

The first three episodes were screen as a "world preview" at Geneva's Tout Ecran Movie Festival (Festival Cinéma Tout Ecran) on October 31, 2007 (albeit only coincidentally for Halloween). Later, was a twenty-episode documentary series, of three minutes each episode, and produced by Rita and Chocolat TV Productions, aired on Télévision Suisse Romande as well as on Chocolat's website, before the latter was removed, which documented the first production. Afterwards, an account of a promoter, impersonating an now-teenage Heidi, was opened on a blog and an MySpace page, where the character promoted the series. The series premiered on the Swiss network Télévision Suisse Romande on December 22, 2007, in Swiss HD. In France, Studio 100 Animation bought the rights in 2013 and produced a 3D series of 39 episodes of 26 minutes each, now directed by Jérôme Mouscadet, from that year to 2014 and the completed series began airing in 2015.

Due to the partnership of Eurovision Fiction, was the series sent to their affiliated countries, including Ireland, Norway (see below), Cyprus (in Greek dub), Slovakia (also see below), Bulgaria and Poland and aired (as of recent, at least part-finished) on the EBU member chains of those countries.

Changes

From Heidi, Girl of the Alps, for time and/or other reasons, were several changes made in this version:

• The characterizations were heavily simplified; with Heidi, her emotions were more prominent and her friendship with Peter is less affected by his beating tendencies of the goats, partly because they're stopped at once, when Heidi sees that and does her action.
• Sub-plots, from Heidi's relationship with the fir trees to the eventual living in the winter home, are either altered (including being simplified) or removed entirely or even created for this series: of the last one, partway through Heidi learning how to read, Clara and her grandmother inform Heidi of: "Princess and the Frog", which they turn to making performance out of; based on that fairy tale being one of those shown with its illustration to Heidi, while Clara's grandmother first encouraged her to learn how to read, that night.
• Many of the base series' more episodic plots are re-told; the "Sad News-Snowflake" two-parter is told as: "Save Sweetheart", where the butcher is independent of the goat, the plants searched for saving the goat are in a singular place and adds the sub-plot of Therese trying to keep one of the flock at bay, while Peter and Heidi climb the nearby mountains for the plants.
• Clara's training to being walking begins while Heidi's still in Frankfurt and progresses from there to episode thirty-eight.
• Elements from the two-part novel, including the religious elements (generally removed in the base series for comprehensibility issues with the more current Buddhist audience) are returned, sometimes loosely; Heidi's tendend prayers to the little star is based on her praying to God, to find a way to get her home to the Alm, inspired by Clara's grandmother's advice.
• A "terrible trio" group of villains are introduced, most prominent in the first third of the series, where they usually try to get Peter's secret cabin to themselves, especially from Heidi. Their trio ends when Carl moves away.

Critical reception

While it was a simple success in France, in countries where the original series is well-loved, from Mexico to Germany, it has, at the most positive, gotten a lukewarm reaction, including claims from Latin American fans that the story changes "ruined" the entire series, much like other series like this. In Germany, the series had its reincarnation of the famous German theme song, now sung by Austrian folk star Andreas Gabalier, attacked for his "horrendous" singing ability.^[3]

Worldwide titles

United Kingdom*: Heidi - London Live, Tiny Pop
Ireland*: Heidi - TG4
France: Heidi - TF1
Norway*: Historien om Heidi ("The Story of Heidi") - NRK Super (in New Norwegian^[4])
Latin America: Heidi 3D - Disney Channel (Latin America)
Germany: Heidi - ZDF and KiKA
Austria: Heidi - ORF1
Hungary*: Heidi - Minimax
Spain: Heidi 3D - CLAN and Canal Panda
Portugal: Heidi 3D - Canal Panda
Italy: Heidi - Rai YoYo
Brazil: Heidi 3D - Disney Channel Brasil
Switzerland*: Heidi - Télévision Suisse Romande (the original French version)
Slovakia*: Heidi - :2
Turkey: Heidi - :TRT Çocuk
Israel*: היידי - Yes Kidz
Australia*: Heidi - Nine Network
Poland: TVP1, Filmbox Family

(*) - The country has not aired Heidi, Girl of the Alps before this series.

References

External links

• Heidi on Internet Move Database