It used the footage of the French stop motion animation show Le Manège enchanté but with completely different scripts and characters.

It proved a great success and attained cult status,[2] and when in October 1966 it was moved from the slot just before the evening news to an earlier children's viewing time, adult viewers complained to the BBC.

The main character is Dougal (also known as Doogal) (Pollux in the original French-language version), who was a drop-eared variety of the Skye Terrier.

There are two notable human characters: Florence (Margote), a young girl; and Mr Rusty (le Père Pivoine), the elderly moustached operator of the roundabout.

Other characters included Mr McHenry (Bonhomme Jouvence), the elderly gardener who rode a tricycle, and a talking locomotive with a 4-2-2 wheel arrangement and a two-wheel tender.

Dougal, Brian, Ermintrude and Dylan all reside in a place called The Magic Garden (Beautywood in the US version).

The English version of Dougal was generally disparaging and had similarities with the television character of Tony Hancock,[2] an actor and comedian.

Part of the show's attraction was that it appealed to adults, who enjoyed the world-weary Hancock-style comments made by Dougal, as well as to children.

In fact, when Serge Danot was interviewed by Joan Bakewell on Late Night Line-Up in 1968 his associate (perhaps Jean Biard) said that in France it was thought at first that the UK version of Pollux had been renamed "De Gaulle", mishearing the name Dougal (as seen in the Channel 4 documentary The Return of the Magic Roundabout (broadcast 08:50 on 25 December 1991 and 18:00 on 5 January 1992), and in the 2003 BBC4 documentary The Magic Roundabout Story).

At the end of one episode, "A Peaceful Day", when Zebedee called his catchphrase of "Time for bed", Florence asked "Already?

Danot made a longer film, Pollux et le chat bleu, in 1970 which was also adapted by Thompson and shown in Britain as Dougal and the Blue Cat.

Among the film's many highlights, Buxton made a disguised Dougal face his ultimate weakness by locking him in a room full of sugar.

The movie was about Dougal, Ermintrude, Brian and Dylan going on a quest to stop Zebadee's evil twin Zeebad, who intends on creating an eternal winter.

It was made using modern computer animation, and adopted the approach of the original creator, Serge Danot, of giving each character its own voice rather than using a narrator.

The voices included Tom Baker, Joanna Lumley, Ian McKellen, Jim Broadbent, Kylie Minogue, Robbie Williams, Ray Winstone, Bill Nighy and Lee Evans.

The majority of original British voices were replaced by celebrities more familiar to the American public, such as Whoopi Goldberg and Chevy Chase.

It was also a financial failure, grossing a total of 7.2 million dollars in the United States, which is considered low by CGI animated film standards.

In October 2008, a Double DVD Bumper Pack Boxset of the 2007 reboot was released from Abbey Home Media, called Dougal's Darling and The Wishing Tree.

In 1975, Jasper Carrott released "The Magic Roundabout" (originally featured on his first live LP Jasper Carrot – In the Club), a short, risqué comic monologue, parodying the children's TV series, as the B-side of a 7-inch single, featuring his comic song "Funky Moped" on the A-side.

In 1971, BBC Records released The Magic Roundabout (RBT 8), an LP containing 10 stories taken from the soundtracks of the TV series as told by Eric Thompson.

Apart from the original film Dougal and the Blue Cat, the series has yet to receive any standalone release on DVD, but five of the original black-and-white episodes, including the series premiere, "Mr. Rusty Meets Zebedee", have been included as a bonus on the second disc of the UK Special Edition DVD of the 2005 CGI film.