Snug and Cozi

Format

A ten-minute slapstick series for Children's television. The principal characters are Snug and Cozi, aliens from the planet Squadge. Travelling in deep space their pink rocket is hit by an asteroid and knocked off course. They crash land on the Earth, where they are discovered, and befriend a girl called Emily. She hides them in her the garden shed at the bottom of her garden. Snug and Cozi speak a language called Squidge, which is gibberish to humans, but the occasional English word is recognisable.

Creation and Pilot episode

The idea was dreamed up by actor and film maker, Richard Vobes. In 1994, along with fellow actor, Nigel Cooper, they produced a low budget pilot version of the show on 16mm film. Originally, the idea was to explore the idea of aliens living in a potting shed on an allotment. When commissioned in 1996 by STV the series as developed further, which included the a slight alteration to the spelling of Cozi in the title. (The original spelt more 'cosy'). The opening sequence explained how the aliens crashed on Earth, altered slightly from the pilot, but did incorporated some of the originally animation footage of the rocket ship in the opening titles,.

The characters never tried to integrate into the environment and continued to wear their conspicuous spacesuits.

Richard Vobes was never entirely happy with the TV series as he was not allowed to direct it, and therefor was not allowed to do a lot of the slapstick stunts wrote in the scripts, a lot of the stunts were faked or never done, Richard said in a recent interview the only stunt they were allowed to do was riding a bed down a hill and into a carwash (In the episode 'A New Home').

Characters

Popularity

The show received a 32% audience share on CITV, back in the days of 4 channels in Britain. Sadly not widely remembered, but available to watch on YouTube. There were 2 series and 16 episodes. Scripts for a 3rd series was planned but, changes at the ITV Network meant it was never commissioned.

Live shows and tours

Snug and Cozi made appearances on many other CITV programmes, such as Wow in 1996, Scratchy & Co. in 1997 and Timmy Towers in 1998.

In 1998, Snug and Cozi appeared in a pantomime of Cinderella at the Doncaster Civic Theatre. Their role were Brokers Men. No one in the audience could really the understand Squidge so Snug and Cozi ate dictionary's and suddenly were able to speak English.

Snug and Cozi also did a Pink Caravan tour, where they did shows around Britain in their pink caravan. However, there were not many gigs, and on one of the shows, the Rocket Car they used set on fire, and the fire brigade had to come and put the fire out.

Merchandise

The show has never been released on VHS or DVD. A Snug and Cozi CD was also released called 'Pink Heads' in 1997. To promote the CD Snug and Cozi traveled to london to give the Prime Minister a copy of the CD.

Richard Vobes is currently writing a series of Snug and Cozi children's books. For further information see http://www.vobes.com.

Snug and Cozi was recently included in a book called 'The Legends of Kids TV' (see http://www.legendsofkidstv.co.uk) written by Garry Vaux, where Richard talked about his time on the show.

Episode guide

Unbroadcast pilot (1994)

Series 1 (1996)

Series 2 (1997)