AustLit

Godfrey Philipps's first major television production for children, The Magic Circle Club was strongly inspired by pantomime, including not only a mixture of dialogue and song-and-dance routines but also the casting of male actors as elderly female characters, in the tradition of pantomime dames. The program also drew heavily from fairytales, featuring a number talking animals, stereotypical villains, and magical characters.

Initially, the program's storylines ran over a five-episode story arc, beginning in Monday's episode and concluding in Friday's. Later in the program's run, the story arcs were truncated to four episodes, with Friday's episode dedicated to a standalone set in a toy store stocked with anthropomorphised dolls.

The program was axed by ATV-0 in 1967 because of the high cost of production. Though the ABC immediately offered to undertake production, Reg Ansett (then owner of ATV-0) refused to relinquish ownership of the intellectual property, and the aBC instead produced similar but distinct (and equally successful) Adventure Island.

In December 1965, a specially written episode of The Magic Circle Club, 'The Stolen Smile', was performed on stage at the Tivoli Theatre, Melbourne, stage-managed by Sue Nattras, Simon Wincer, and Jim McElroy.

A mixture of pantomime, song and dance, Adventure Island - The Next Generation has all new stories and music, but still has the same sense of fun and core values of the original show.'

'[Based on the] original series of the popular Australian television series for children screened on the ABC from September 11 1967 to December 22 1972, with repeats running from 1973 to 1976 ... produced by Godfrey Productions and broadcast ... from ... [the ABC] Melbourne studios ... The [original television series] was created by John Michael Howson and Executive Producer Godfrey Phillipp, with Howson writing the majority of the scripts and also appearing in each episode ... Howson also wrote four storybooks based on the show.

Source: Adventure Island : The Next Generation website, www.adventureisland.com.au (sighted: 30/06/2009)