Purno de Purno

Purno de Purno
Also known as	Purno
Genre	Animation Surreal comedy
Created by	Marcus Vlaar Hans Wessels
Country of origin	Netherlands
Original language	Dutch
No. of seasons	5
No. of episodes	56
Production
Animators	Marcus Vlaar Hans Wessels
Running time	13 minutes (season 2) 2 1/2 minutes (season 3) 7 minutes (seasons 4 and 5)
Production companies	Hootchie Cootchie Cartoons VPRO
Original release
Network	VPRO (Nederland 2)
Release	5 November 1992 (1992-11-05) – 1996 (1996)
Network	Nederland 3 via Z@ppelin
Release	2005 (2005) – 12 November 2007 (2007-11-12)

Purno de Purno, also simply known as Purno, is a Dutch television series created by Marcus Vlaar and Hans Wessels. The series aired on the children's slot on Nederland 2, airing under the VPRO's children's block in its first run. It also became notorious for its adult jokes, becoming the first children's series to be blocked by YouTube for underage users.

Premise

The series focuses on the bizarre adventures of Purno, a man in a purple suit, speaking with a nasal voice (played by Theo Wesselo, of Rembo & Rembo). His catchphrase is "sapperedosio!" (a neologism representing surprise, concern, approval or disapproval). Other characters include Buuf, Purno's beautiful neighbor, Stupid Duck (Stomme Eend), the Chinese villain Dr. Ha Chiu, Pedo, a postman who licks stamps, Kiet, a giant blue elephant-like monster that tickles drawn in a stereotypical view of black people with a Surinamese accent that tickles and Sjakie, an abstract-looking big-nosed yellow creature who lives inside a painting. The character later became a Chinese stereotype at the later seasons in order to make the series seem more diverse.

List of episodes

Season 1 (1992)

Six episodes of ten minutes each. Airdates in this section refer to the 1992 run.

1. Purno is de lul (5 January 1992)
2. In het hol van de kietelaar (12 January 1992)
3. De schaduwwereld van Cas Vegas (19 January 1992)
4. De binnenstebuiten planeet (26 January 1992)
5. Meiniedeinies (2 February 1992)
6. Het wonderelixer van Pad Pong (9 February 1992)

Season 2 (1994-1995)

Ten episodes of thirteen minutes each.

1. Coconut Sjakie (6 November 1994)
2. Het droomgat (13 November 1994)
3. Superpurno en het snifsnaf poeder (20 November 1994)
4. Sunil Baba en de 40 graden was (27 November 1994)
5. Puzzelbach am Niesl (4 December 1994)
6. Stage crazy (11 December 1994)
7. Canard d'art (18 December 1994)
8. Het kapperscomplot (25 December 1994)
9. Beauty on the Beach (1 January 1995)
10. Speciale aanbieding (8 January 1995)

Season 3 (1996)

Twenty-six episodes of 2.5 minutes each.

1. Willem Ruis
2. Mol in je Hol
3. Irritantjes
4. 100% Scheithanz
5. Vlinderhypnose
6. Ruzie in de slagerij
7. Supersuck 2000
8. Levensliedje
9. Kleine Purno
10. In de wolken
11. In de kast
12. Het Kameraadje
13. Gat in de muur
14. Zwart beest
15. Purno goes interactive
16. Purno de Purno de Purno
17. Kerstverhaal
18. De grote Bikini verdwijntruc
19. Oud en Nieuw
20. Stand-up Comedian
21. Onzichtbaarheidslotion
22. Reïncarnatie
23. Hoil Therapie
24. Opperwezen
25. Extra knoflook
26. De PurnoPosse is in the house

Season 4 (2005-2006)

Thirteen episodes of 7 minutes each.

1. Het geheime kistje
2. De grote blote vrouw
3. Pizza Fantasia
4. Blotensteijn
5. El Boeffo
6. Homo Museum
7. Tutti frutti
8. Økenøken
9. Sjakie's Dating Service
10. All inclusive
11. Boogie & Woogie
12. Pokon Purno
13. Sjakie de Sjakie

Season 5 (2007)

Seven episodes of 7 minutes each.

1. Kreezie Kloontje
2. Gurlie
3. Zwarte Sjakie
4. Dr. Freundshaft
5. De Vlinderkoning
6. Prins Carnaval
7. Het Mysterie van de verdwenen Harderwijker

Production

According to the creators Marcus Vlaar and Hans Wessels, the name Purno comes from their childhood's best friend:

"We used to live next to a tennis court. My younger brother had a friend, Vincent, who spoke with a bit of a nasal twang and was really good at finding balls. Whenever someone hit a ball over the fence, Vincent would say, ‘Just you wait, *Speurneus* [Sleuth] will find the ball!’ *Speurneus* became Purno; that’s what everyone called him. Marcus and I thought it was a funny name."

Vlaar and Wessels had previously studied fine art painting at the Willem de Kooning Academy but found the canvas too limiting; they subsequently enrolled in the Image and Media Technology program at the Utrecht School of the Arts, where they were introduced to computer animation with two megabytes of RAM and only 32 colors at a resolution of 320×200 pixels. The frame rate was just 12 frames per second (half the standard rate). Animations were saved to diskette on the Amiga, after which they could be recorded onto Betacam in the Hootchie-Cootchie Cartoons studio at Rotterdam and subsequently edited into a complete animated film.

The character Purno was created in 1988 as a mix of Marcus and Vlaar. The series was not only popular with children, but also with adults, as other VPRO programmes were referenced (Ffukkie Slim and Keepvogel) as well as paintings by Salvador Dalí and Edward Hopper. Purno's first appearance was in a science show on the same VPRO slot, Het torren van pizzas (The Tower of Pizzas) in 1989, after which it became a standalone series in 1992. Series 4 and 5 were also largely created digitally, though using technology from around 2006. The animation is hand-drawn and then scanned into Toon Boom Harmony alongside backgrounds at Photoshop mixed with CGI elements. For Series 5, the company Urrebuk—which had by then taken over production—switched to cut-out animation done at Anime Studio Pro, which allowed for a significant acceleration of the production process. At the time, Urrebuk consisted of founders Maarten Visser, Bas de Ruiter, Michiel Wesselius, and Sander Alt. They produced 20 episodes commissioned by Purno's creators who wrote the scripts and handled the production side of things from 2005 onwards.

At its peak, the demographic with the most fans were underaged nonetheless it received letters from parents because of the sexual jokes. The producers thought that Since August 2013, most YouTube copies of the series were age-restricted to underage viewers. The producers at the time thought that violence was a much worse influence than sex.

Wessels later went on to create, also for VPRO, Ffukkie Slim, which aired on Z@ppelin in 2002 to 2007 attracting a huge 8-12 audience.

Broadcast

Initially, Purno de Purno aired in the Sunday morning VPRO children's block, later moving to weekdays before Sesamstraat. It was in this timeslot that criticism began.

The fourth season was repeated from 6 September 2007 on Zappelin on Nederland 3.

Homages

A Purno Day was held at Melkweg in Amsterdam on 16 June 2018, with a non-stop seven-hour loop of all of its episodes. Several of its staff are fans of the series.