Watch Monkey Dust Online

Monkey Dust was an English satirical cartoon, notorious for its excessively dark humour and handling of taboo topics such as rape, murder, suicide and paedophilia. There were three series broadcast on BBC3 between 2003 and 2005. Following co-creator Harry Thompson's death, no further series were made.

Each episode featured animation by several different companies including Slinky Pictures, Nexus Productions, Sherbet Animation (of which Mr Bingo was a part) and Picasso Pictures, but is linked by recurring themes and jokes, and by seamless transitions between sketches. The episodes are untitled but instead are known by the characters introduced or the one-off sketches included. The principal writers and creators of the series were Harry Thompson and Shaun Pye, although other contributors were responsible for a significant proportion of the work; sometimes collaborating with Thompson and/or Pye; sometimes contributing fully-formed sketches to the show. A short overview of the main characters, called a nocturne, set in the various characters' bedrooms with no dialogue and a depressing accompanying song, usually precedes the final section.

The animation goes alongside contemporary music which helps the scenes to flow, with numerous songs by Goldfrapp, Boards of Canada, Black Box Recorder, and introduction music by Eels ("That's Not Really Funny" from Souljacker). The inclusion of music from Goldfrapp during the first series would have pre-dated the commercial release of their debut album, but production on the series took so long that by the time of airing, Goldfrapp were about to release their second album and the songs included in Monkey Dust were fairly well-known. Thompson and Pye comment on this in the Series 1 DVD commentary.

On 8 November 2004, the first series of Monkey Dust was released in the UK on DVD. Several musical substitutions had to be made from the television airing (where the BBC is allowed to play any commercial release without permission), as artists such as Cliff Richard and David Gray would not allow their work to be used on the DVD. Cover versions of the original songs were used instead.

The second and third series were broadcast on BBC Two and BBC Three respectively. Only the first series of Monkey Dust was commercially released on DVD.

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