Just perfect...

Intense, gripping, stylish and poignant

How sad is this?

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

The Dreamstone's original premise seemed to take a great deal of inspiration from Tolkien and was about a Hobbit-like creature called Rufus who travelled and faced adversaries in order to confront a Sauron-like villain (Zordrak/Nasta Shelfim/Satan Himself) over a One Ring-like trinket (The Dreamstone) for the benefit of a Gandalf-like character (the Dream-Maker). The original two-part pilot stuck fairly closely to this idea, with beautifully designed and imaginative worlds and characters. It had the benefit of sympathetic and more developed villains than most cartoons of this era. As the series went on, the villains were more like antiheroes in contrast to the characters who were supposed to be the goodies, and as others have noticed the goodies are unsympathetic and unlikeable just by virtue of being pitted against these characters, which for reasons that never make sense are treated as total pariahs even though the heroes seem to be fully aware that they are slaves belonging to an evil overlord who kills them at the drop of a hat.The protagonists I suppose are perfectly acceptable as stock fantasy heroes and in anything lesser with comparable stock villains this would have been an unremarkable and forgettable children's cartoon. Some of the less frequently seen protagonists, in particular Wildit (wonderfully voice acted) and Spildit and the gardener are a lot of fun. The Noops who are the main characters are just irritating goody-goodies who run to the Dream-maker, and in a lot of episodes Pildit, who are depicted with deus ex machina powers that really do nothing to avert the antagonists' underdog status or make the protagonists in any way sympathetic.I recall when it originally aired, The Dreamstone replaced another science-fantasy cartoon, which from what I remember and what I've been able to trace was a Spanish cartoon called La Corona Magica (The Magic Crown) dubbed into English. I've been unable to find the English dub, but what made both these cartoons stick in my memory was the development of the villains. Corona Magica had a villain character called Zohak and the series was pretty much about his fall from grace. Despite the excellence of the antagonists in The Dreamstone, no character arc develops throughout four series. Every episode is pretty much the same plot and the Urpneys are being sent to the Land of Dreams to try to cause the goodies (whom we don't care about anyway) to have bad dreams, and failing through bad luck when we really want them to succeed and the goodies are laughing at their misfortune or beating them up, and then they go home and get beaten up again. Sergeant Blob is bossy and arrogant and speaks in malapropisms, but is loyal to his subordinates (and inexplicably to Zordrak), Frizz is neurotic, and Nug is this sort of sweet, philosophical, slightly hippieish sort of guy. Urpgor is insane, power- mad, and totally conceited and self- obsessed, and he does sort of toy a few times with the idea of going rogue, which is as close as it ever gets. It's kind of depressing that they never try to get out of this miserable and abusive situation and make something better for themselves. All four of them have amazing voice actors… well, Urpgor's original voice actor is amazing, but he gets replaced with someone rather less talented.In some of the episodes, the villains carry swords, but are never seen to use them. More absurdly, each of them has what appears to be two spikes on the tail. They never use these for self defence and their tails are often shown to be inadvertently jammed in objects or bitten by adversaries, or used as a grappling point for enemies larger than them. They also wear metal breastplates, shoulderguards and helmets which doesn't seem to be very effective at protecting them (and although they have hair in the initial episodes, they're later depicted as having shaved heads exactly the same shape as their helmets). This is more wasted potential, as at least showing the antagonists to be intimidating would have gone some way to addressing the underdog syndrome.Likewise the protagonists remain stuck in a rut and they don't become any more likable and their situation and their desperation to have nice dreams does not become any more sympathetic, and their overpowered elders never become powerless and leave them to suffer real peril. It's not really the best message for children -- that you can be a good person in some ways, but if you're an Urpney life will treat you badly regardless and you're not entitled to anything, and that if you're a Noop, you're entitled to treat people badly just because they're Urpneys, and can insist on petty things like not having bad dreams.Another thing that bothered me even as a child was the Urpneys getting squashed flat, inflated, etc. in pretty much all the episodes other than the pilot. It was a sophisticated animation with great designs and music. This sort of stupidity is beneath it and really doesn't fit, and isn't funny. Considering in the pilot someone was killed for real by being dumped in a pit full of carnivorous beasts and someone else was assumed dead because rocks fell on them, it just doesn't make sense at all for normal rules of biology not to apply.This has come out as a bit of a moany review. While we tend to forget and have little to say about television offerings that are genuinely poor in every respect, the ones that are memorable and have many great aspects we tend to notice the faults with. There really is a lot to love about The Dreamstone. As it is, it's superlative for it's time and gets off to a strong start in the pilot episodes, but it's hard not to see the wasted potential and how it could have been something epic.

The Dreamstone is certainly a show that brings back my nostalgia goggles. With the internet I can now take another gander at the show. For those of you unacquainted with the show, The Dreamstone is a British animated series created for CITV during the early 90s. The central plot for each episode revolved around the Land of Dreams, a world completely divided in half in the premise of providing happy dreams and nightmares for it's inhabitants. Good dreams are provided in the Land of Dreams by a wizard like character blatantly nicknamed the Dreammaker, and a population of species called the Noops (strange little Jazz Jackrabbit type civilians) and the Wuts (a tribe of magical poodle like beings) while the Nightmares are provided by demonic lizard Zordrak and his ghostly Aggoribles in the land of Viltheed. The Dream Maker manages to keep nightmares from invading the Land of Dreams thanks to the title device; the Dreamstone which holds away Zordrak's Aggoribles. As such Zordrak is insistent on nabbing the thing, enlisting his minions, the Urpneys (basically slovenly humans with lizard tails and enormous noses) to steal it, with limited success.The show starts off with a rather epic narration more or less explaining the basic plot above. In a rarity, each episode begins from the villains' point of view. All the bad guys have an amusing charm to them, ranging from the incredibly fearsome (but hilariously hammy and exasperated) boss Zordrak, his scatterbrained second in command Sgt Blob and his two neurotic "not-all-that-evil" cronies Frizz and Nug and the rivalistic and completely deranged mad scientist Urpgor, who creates the inane vehicles and inventions which Blob's men utilise to try steal the stone. Character oozes from these guys and the clever wit and slapstick means they usually make every scene they are in a hoot, leaving me to wonder why exactly I begun to lose interest in such a charming show. Then we meet the good guys...Following the villains plotting their attack on the Utopian Land of the Dreams, we then meet the protagonists, the Dream maker, his two young Noop assistants, Rufus and Amberley and his pet Dogfish Albert (yes, that's exactly what it sounds like). The depiction of the heroes is EXTREMELY cutesy. Most of the protagonists are rather bland and never really intertwine themselves into the show's comedy as well as the bad guys do. Even the manner they are voiced and animated is much flatter and generic in comparison to that of the villains (which almost rivals what Disney and Warner Bros were churning out at the time). Not to mention they are thoroughly infallible and lacking in pathos, and half the time come off more as self righteous bullies due to the Urpneys' ridiculously sympathetic dynamic. In short, you WILL root for the bad guys the large majority of the time.It's a real shame. The concepts for the show overall brim with potential and are genuinely creative. Mike Jupp's character designs are brilliant and the surreal setup leaves you wanting to see more. Sadly the show's heart doesn't seem to be really with it (oddly enough the actual dream premise is hardly ever seen and most attempts world building are ruined by the heroes' dull execution).The Dreamstone is a show that REALLY makes me want to love it, but in the end I can only say so for half of it, it's a really big shame, if they had kept up a consistent charm and personality to the good guys as much as the villains, this may have earned an impressive 8 or even a 9 If you want to get a taster of the show, I highly advise watching the opening special for the series at it's highest form, otherwise watch any episode and have a laugh, just be expected to fast forward through to the far more entertaining villain scenes each and every time.

This remarkable cartoon series from 1990 goes to the top of my wish list for a return! It was created by Michael Jupp and produced by Martin Gates (he also produce another childhood favourite of mine "The Wind in the Willows: The Adventures of Mole") and with this animated T.V series's state of the art animation and beautiful songs it blew me away! It follows the tale of Rufus, an Nook who are cuddly, friendly and hard working creatures who assist the Dream Maker who help to bring sweet dreams to the world but the Lord of Nightmare has other ideas, he wants nightmares to rule! Only the Dream Maker with the help of the magical Dream Stone can stop along with Rufus at his side and not to mention his pet Albert, a goldfish with a doggy attitude! This has captured my heart and I want it so much to return to terrestrial television! 10/10

The Dreamstone. What can one say about it? It remains one of the best children's tv series of the 1990s. In my opinion, nothing has surpassed it yet, although Bimble's Bucket, another of Mike Jupp's creations, comes close. Having been lucky enough to meet the talented and very nice Mr Jupp, I can honestly say that the Dreamstone will always remain my favourite cartoon. I just wish ITV would do the decent thing and repeat it! I also wish it would come out on DVD! I strongly recommend buying Mike Jupp's novel RETRIBUTION, too. If you liked Dreamstone, you'll love this: