Crapston Villas is a British animated television series, in which the characters are made from plasticine

Plasticine

Plasticine, a brand of modelling clay, is a putty-like modelling material made from calcium salts, petroleum jelly and aliphatic acids. The name is a registered trademark of Flair Leisure Products plc...

 and filmed with stop motion

Stop motion

Stop motion is an animation technique to make a physically manipulated object appear to move on its own. The object is moved in small increments between individually photographed frames, creating the illusion of movement when the series of frames is played as a continuous sequence...

 clay animation

Clay animation

Clay animation or claymation is one of many forms of stop motion animation. Each animated piece, either character or background, is "deformable"—made of a malleable substance, usually Plasticine clay....

.

It was made by the Spitting Image

Spitting Image

Spitting Image is a British satirical puppet show that aired on the ITV network from 1984 to 1996. It was produced by Spitting Image Productions for Central Television. The series was nominated for 10 BAFTA Awards, winning one for editing in 1989....

 Productions company and was originally broadcast on the UK's Channel 4

Channel 4

Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...

 from 1995 to 1997. It was written by Sarah Ann Kennedy

Sarah Ann Kennedy

Sarah Ann Kennedy is a British voice actress best known for providing the voices of Miss Rabbit in the children's animated series Peppa Pig, Nanny Plum in the children's animated chips series Ben and Holly's Little Kingdom and Dolly Pond in Pond Life. She is also a writer and animation director and...

, who was also director (series 1) along with Peter Boyd Maclean (series 2).

Voices were provided by a host of British acting and comedy talent, including Jane Horrocks

Jane Horrocks

Barbara Jane Horrocks is an English voice, stage, screen and television actress, voice artist, musician, and singer. She is best known for her role as "Bubble" in the TV series Absolutely Fabulous as well as her distinctive voice....

, John Thomson, Alistair McGowan

Alistair McGowan

Alistair McGowan is a British impressionist, stand-up comic, actor, singer and writer best known to British audiences for The Big Impression , which was, for four years, one of BBC1's top-rating comedy programmes - winning numerous awards, including a BAFTA in 2003...

, Morwenna Banks

Morwenna Banks

Morwenna Banks is a British comedy actress, writer and producer.Banks is perhaps best known in the UK as a cast member of the British Channel 4 comedy series Absolutely, where her best-known character was a schoolgirl who sat on the edge of a desk.She appeared as the Keeper of the Rules in the...

, Felix Dexter

Felix Dexter

Felix Dexter is an actor, comedian, and writer living in the U.K..-Early life:Dexter was born in St Kitts in the Caribbean, and moved to London with his family at the age of seven.-Radio:...

, Lesley-Anne Sharpe, Liz Smith

Liz Smith (actress)

Liz Smith, MBE is a British actress, best-known for her roles in the sitcoms The Vicar of Dibley and The Royle Family. She also appeared in the 2005 film Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.-Early life:...

 and Alison Steadman

Alison Steadman

Alison Steadman OBE is an English actress. She established her career with roles such as Beverley in Abigail's Party and Candice Marie in Nuts in May for the director Mike Leigh, to whom she was once married. In addition to her stage and radio work, she has had lead roles in The Singing Detective,...

.

Crapston Villas is a comedy satire on inner-city London life, directed at a mature audience. It features a set of characters, living in a grim apartment building in the fictional postcode of SE69, who are plagued by all sorts of modern society dilemmas. Foul language, sex and violence are present.

Each series comprised ten episodes. Series 1 was subsequently issued on video

VHS

The Video Home System is a consumer-level analog recording videocassette standard developed by Victor Company of Japan ....

, edited together as a single 100 minute piece ("Crapston Villas – City of Slummington"), while Series 2 was similarly released, but on two videos ("Health Hazard" and "Culture Shock"). In the USA five episodes from Series 1 were released on DVD, but so far no DVD releases from either series have occurred in the UK.

Described by the Daily Star as ‘vile, vulgar and hilariously funny’, and by The Guardian as ‘of dubious taste’, the show was cancelled after its second series by the incoming new head of Channel 4 Television, Michael Jackson, who then bought less obviously vulgar US import South Park

South Park

South Park is an American animated television series created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone for the Comedy Central television network. Intended for mature audiences, the show has become famous for its crude language, surreal, satirical, and dark humor that lampoons a wide range of topics...

to fill the late Friday night slot vacated by Crapston Villas.