The series was made by Smallfilms, the company set up by Oliver Postgate (who was the show's writer, animator and narrator) and Peter Firmin (who was its modelmaker and illustrator).

A third series, narrated by Monty Python actor Michael Palin, was broadcast in the UK in June 2015 on the BBC's CBeebies TV channel, gaining hugely successful viewing figures, following on from a short special broadcast by the BBC earlier that year.

A spacecraft hurtled down and splash-landed in it: the top unscrewed, and out came a largish, mouse-like creature in a duffel coat, who wanted fuel for his spaceship.

[5] In 1969 (the year of NASA's first landing on the Moon), the BBC asked Smallfilms to produce a new series for colour television, but without specifying a storyline.

They wore clothes reminiscent of Roman armour, "against the space debris that kept falling onto the planet, lost from other places, such as television sets and bits of an Iron Chicken",[5] and they spoke in whistled language.

[12] The American pre-school channel Sprout were major funders and co-producers having commissioned the series in tandem with the BBC, with William Shatner narrating.

The series creators have said that the Clangers, living in vacuum, did not communicate by sound, but rather by a type of nuclear magnetic resonance, which was translated to audible whistles for the human audience.

If you watch the episode, the one where the rocket goes up and shoots down the Iron Chicken, Major Clanger kicks the door to make it work and his first words are "Sod it, the bloody thing's stuck again".

"[5] Series 1 episode, "The Visitor" features two brief extracts from the song, "No Smokes" (1967) by the Glasgow psychedelic band One in a Million.

[16] John Du Prez, who wrote some of the music for Monty Python (another show Michael Palin was in) composed the score for the 2015 series.

[18] The narrator explains the democratic process, and demonstrates it by asking the Clangers to vote between the Soup Dragon and a Froglet.

[5] This special was believed to be a lost episode for many years,[5] but it was released in full for free by the British Film Institute to coincide with the 2017 UK General Election.

The series was narrated by Michael Palin, and co-produced by Smallfilms with the involvement of Peter Firmin and Oliver Postgate's son, Dan.

The series was directed by Chris Tichborne and Mole Hill,[30] with music composed by John Du Prez.

The BBC News Entertainment and Arts magazine revealed that 65% of the episode's viewing audience of 484,000 were adults, and that it was CBeebies' most watched programme of 2015 up to that date.

The rating was more than double the previous record, set by an episode of Alphablocks, Numberjacks, Waybuloo, Fimbles, Charlie and Lola, Teletubbies, The Lingo Show and The Octonauts that year, as well as other CBeebies favourites since the station's launch in 2002, although an episode of Numberjacks peaked at over 1 million back in 2009.

The same year, William Shatner was chosen to be the American narrator for the series airing on the cable network Sprout.

[32] The Soup Dragons, a Scottish alternative rock band of the late 1980s and early 1990s, took their name from the Clangers character.

The series was not widely broadcast outside the UK in the 1970s, mainly because it did not require additional money from sales abroad to finance its production.

The first 13 episodes were also shown on Czechoslovak Television in August 1972, entitled Rámusíci[36] as a part of the children's evening program slot Večerníček.