The Trap Door

This programme has to be one of the most memorable ones of my childhood and I still smile now when I think of it. The series revolve around Berk, a monster is a servant to the guy upside whom the viewer never sees but only hears shouting orders and demands. Berk has a number of friends to keep him company including Boni, a talking skull who moves around in a scary way and Drutt who he keeps as a pet. Berk has a trap door in the middle of his cellar and he often forgets to close it which causes all kinds of happenings and disruptions. He spends most of the programmes trying to usher whatever has eroded from the trap door back down it again whilst trying to keep ...  Read the complete review

** The Programme ** The Trap Door is a "claymation" style animated television programme which was originally shown in the United Kingdom 1984 with a total of 40 episodes throughout its history. The programme revolves around the daily lives and adventures of a group of monsters (that are quite cute really!) who live in a castle. Berk, is a servant in the castle and the programme centres mainly on him. The master of the castle is "The Thing Upstairs", which lives in the attic, and is a character that is never actually shown. He usually shouts down at Berk if he is hungry or some jobs need doing in the castle. Berk has two ...  Read the complete review

I'm a child of the eighties, and any gathering with my friends oftern turns back to the things we loved as a kid - the music, the clothes, and especially the things we'd watch on TV . The Trapdoor is one of my personal favourites, first broadcast in 1984 . It's a claymation style kids series, featuring lovable plasticine characters, many of which I attempted to lovingly craft in my own plasticine play sessions. It revolves around Berk, a servant in a castle, who works in a cellar for 'the thing upstairs', a disembodied voice never seen in the show . As he goes about his duties, preparing his masters food, he's kept company by Boni, a speaking ...  Read the complete review

Saturday mornings mean different things to different people depending upon what generation they come from. Whether it’s Chris Tarrant and Lenny Henry on ‘Tiswas’, or Ant and Dec on ‘CD:UK’, that europhoric feeling of coming downstairs on a Saturday to flick on the goggle-box in the knowledge that there’s no more school for 48 hours is a feeling I can remember well... It was generally accepted that during the 1980’s, the Beeb provided the best morning TV, with ‘Saturday Superstore’, and later, ‘Going Live!’. However, despite the allure of Sarah Greene and her unorthodox taste in legwear, Gordon ...  Read the complete review

"DON'T YOU OPEN THAT TRAPDOOR YOU'RE A FOOL IF YOU DARE. DON'T YOU OPEN THAT TRAPDOOR CAUSE THERE'S SOMETHING DOWN THERE" Almost as good a signature tune as "Jamie and the Magic Torch", but not quite. Spawned out of the popularity of animation programmes such as Morph, "The Trap Door" was a plasticine animation, featuring a large, dense, blue creature. His name was Burk. Now, how you can make a whole series out of the same story is anyone's guess, but basically, the programme revolved around Burk having to make a meal for the big bloke upstairs. Nothing complicated in that, I hear you cry, ...  Read the complete review