Caillou (rare alternate Playhouse Disney UK dub/cut, 2009-2011)

(Article imported by author from Lost Media EU Wiki)

Caillou is a Canadian-French educational children's television series that was first shown on Télétoon and Teletoon, with its first episode airing on the former channel on September 15, 1997; the show later moved to Treehouse TV, with its final episode being shown on that channel on October 3, 2010. The series aired in the USA on PBS in 2000. The series is based on the books by author Christine L'Heureux and illustrator Hélène Desputeaux. It centres on a 4-year-old boy named Caillou who is fascinated by the world around him.

You may have heard that there was a British dub of this show that aired from 2007 to 2012 on Cartoonito and Tiny Pop. However, there was also an alternate British dub that aired on Playhouse Disney UK from September 2009 up until Playhouse Disney's rebrand in May 2011 (as Caillou ended in 2010, and Playhouse Disney showed the entire series minus certain episodes, airings after that were reruns.) Caillou's Holiday Movie was also dubbed and aired as a special during December of 2009 and 2010.

It may not be completely accurate to consider this a dub, because according to some reports and some confirmed footage it not only redubbed the voices into a British accent but gave the show a slight overhaul. You see, even at the time, the show was not getting the most positive reviews, and things like 'Caillou is a brat' and 'Caillou is doing bad things and not getting punished for them' were mentioned often. So during the dubbing of the show, there were some changes made.

In general, the script and scenes were tweaked to cut out the parts where Caillou showed bratty behaviour, protraying him as a better-behaved child. One of the confirmed edits (which has video evidence) is in the intro itself. The intros correspond to their seasons (the season 1 intro has Caillou in a grey shirt, after that with a yellow shirt, and the newer intro as the show began to use Flash) but the audio stays the same as the dub was reused. However, intros before the Flash intro were tweaked to change the clip of Caillou throwing a tantrum to one of him just being sad in general. As this was already taken away for the Flash intro no changes were made there apart from the audio. As well as these changes there were some slight dialouge altercations to fit more with British culture such as Caillou calling his mother 'Mummy' instead of 'Mommy'.

Another change was the skipping of certain episodes. The episodes that were already banned were never dubbed, but controversial episodes like Caillou Joins the Circus and Rosie Bothers Caillou were also chosen to not be dubbed either. Any episodes with only occassional bratty moments had those edited out or changed.

This dub didn't use custom credits to show the British VAs, so they are unknown. It also had an extra one that said 'DUB BY MISFITZ LTD' Misfitz Ltd being the company that produced the dub.

There is also a final screen at the end that was shown instead of the Playhouse Disney logo. On a white background the Playhouse Disney logo is shown to the left and the PBS Kids logo to the right, and some text above reads 'Distributed by Playhouse Disney on behalf on PBS Kids'.

The series was reasonably advertised on the Playhouse Disney Channel and occassional on the main Disney Channel too. A handful of adverts were made for it, and there are reports there was even an Ooh and Aah segment where they got a letter from Caillou. There were also a few clips of the show on the Playhouse Disney website. The show received some praise (most likely due to these edits) but it wasn't extremely popular. When Playhouse Disney rebranded to Disney Junior, Caillou was dropped from the schedule and the clips were removed.

There are a few findings of this dub, but it is more lost than found. The intros and outros for all the seasons, one advert, a Coming Up Next bumper, assorted clips of episodes, three full episodes (Shadow Play, Caillou's Snow Day and Caillou's Safari) and a VHS recording of Caillou's Holiday Movie are availible online, but they are on more obscure video sharing websites and not YouTube. It is unlikely much more of the dub will be found, though.