Saturday 21 February 2015

97 Josie and the Pussycats


First  watched  :  1972

Josie  and  the  Pussycats  provided  further  proof  that  Hanna-Barbera  were  spreading  the  jam  a  little   thinly. Its  format  was  so  similar  to  Scooby  Doo  - the  series'  two  male  protagonists  looked  suspiciously  similar  to  Fred  and  Shaggy - that  it's  difficult  to  retrieve  any  specific  recollection  of  the  show. Josie  and  the  Pussycats  were  a  lasciviously  drawn  girl  band  with  an  unusual  guitar-drums-tambourine  line  up  whose  tours  were  always  marked  by  getting  caught  up   in  criminal  conspiracies. Each  episode  would  feature a  chase  sequence  set  to  one  of  the  group's  dire  songs.

It  differed  from  Scooby  Doo  in  having  a  villain  in  the  regular  cast, their  manager's  sister  Alexandra  who  wanted  a  share  of  the  limelight  and  to  prise  guitarist  Josie  away  from  hunky  roadie  Alan. Rather  than  learning  bass  or  keyboards  she  took  the  Dick  Dastardly  route  of  scheming  and  unfailingly  self-defeating  sabotage.  

Sixteen  episodes  were  made  of  the  original  series  then  a  further  sixteen  of  its  reboot  as  Josie  and  the  Pussycats  in  Outer  Space   where  the  criminals  were  replaced  by  aliens.  However  the  Beeb  only  screened  18  episodes  across  the  two  series  between  1972  and  1975. Their  last  appearance  was  as  guest  stars  in  a  episode  of  The  New  Scooby  Doo  Movies.

A  live  action  movie  was  a  box  office  disaster  in  2001.

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