Charlie & Lola
[Series 2 & 3: 26 x 12min, Tiger Aspect for BBC / Disney, 2006-8]
Children’s animation series now broadcast in around 40 countries (co-composer with John Greswell).
* Series 2: Winner – Best Original Score 2007 Royal Television Society Awards
* Series 2: Winner – Best Children’s Programme 2007 Broadcast Awards
* Series 2 & 3: Winner of BAFTA for Best Pre-School Series 2007 & 2008,
* Series 3: BAFTA for Best Animation 2008
I started working on the music for Charlie & Lola at the end of 2005. The incredibly talented John Greswell (of MPM) had written the score for the first series but was exhausted at the prospect of a whole second series all on his own, so drafted me in. We sometimes collaborated, but generally we wrote the score for alternate episodes. This arrangement worked out really well, so we carried it on through the third and final series of the show, which we finished working on in Spring 2008.
Unusually for children’s television, each episode was written with completely new music. With the exception of a couple of tiny stings (e.g. Lola’s ‘pink milk’ theme), we had to make up totally new themes for every episode. This made it a far more labour intensive project than most animated series which use a library of repeated tracks (watch every episodes of Mr Benn, and you’ll find the same music on all of them – and what fantastic music!)
Anyway, perhaps all this extra effort paid off, because John and I were over the moon to get the Royal Television Society Award for Best Original Score in November 2007 for our work on Series 2. This award had never (so far as I know) gone to a children’s show before, so was a real surprise for us. The jury had these kind words to say about our music: ”Totally new, inspired, varied, incredible and a minor miracle!”
Here are some short clips from various episodes I have scored:
It was a fantastic series to work on and, as well as John, I met so many great people while working on the show.
Watch more Charlie & Lola on the BBC iPlayer (not always available)
ps. the excellent Charlie & Lola theme tune was, I’m sorry to say, nothing to do with me. It was composed by Tom Dyson and Soren Munk and arranged by John & Chris from MPM.