Mr Majeika

Mr Majeika
Starring	Stanley Baxter
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Production
Running time	30 min.
Broadcast
Original channel	ITV Network (CITV)
Original run	1986 – 1988

Mr Majeika is the title of a series of children's books, written by Humphrey Carpenter, and also a children's television series starring Stanley Baxter.^[1] The stories have also been broadcast on radio. The first volume, Mr Majeika, first published in 1984, was followed by Mr Majeika and the Music Teacher, Mr Majeika and the Haunted Hotel and The TV Adventures of Mr Majeika.

Plot

The focus of these stories is Mr Majeika, a teacher at St Barty's Primary School, a typical English primary school. However he is no ordinary man, as is apparent when he flies into Class Three's boring lesson on a magic carpet, which he then turns into a cycle, confounding the headmaster; Mr Majeika is a wizard!

"People don't believe in wizards nowadays, so naturally they don't often pay them to do some work."

—Mr Majeika

He thereafter astounds them with magical trickery which bring lessons to life, whether it is providing chips during dinner for all the children, or turning the nasty Hamish Bigmore into a frog for his insolence. Whatever the consequences, Class Three are sure that with Mr Majeika around, they will not be bored again. A recurring character in Whilomina Warlock, a witch that first appeared as a music teacher and has turned up regularly since in various disguises.

In the television series, Mr Majeika is an irrepressible wizard, sent to "Britland" from the planet Walpurgis because he had failed his O-level sorcery exam for the seventeenth time. He drops into the sleepy village of Much Barty, finding a post at St Barty's School as Class Three's new form-teacher, where he quickly befriends two of the children, Melanie Brace-Girdle and Thomas Grey. Both of these characters are also in the books, but Melanie is a much less important and very different type of character in the books. Also in the books, Thomas has a twin brother called Pete.

Majeika enters into his magic with reluctance, however, because he is trying hard to behave himself on Earth, and because the Worshipful Wizard of Walpurgis is keeping an eye on him from above. All the same, trickery becomes more and more necessary, leading Majeika, Melanie and Thomas into some remarkable adventures. Their fun is despised, but usually prompted, by the horribly spoilt Hamish, a pupil so ghastly that his mere presence had caused the resignation of the previous class teacher and frightened off the 79 applicants for the post. But one waggle of Mr Majeika's oddly tufted grey hair is all that it takes for Bigmore to be put firmly in his place.

Production

The series was written by Jenny McDade. Carpenter wrote the fourth book based on McDade's scripts, The Television Adventures of Mr Majeika.

Cast

• Stanley Baxter as Mr. Majeika
• Roland MacLeod as Dudley Potter
• Fidelis Morgan as Bunty Brace-Girdle
• Eve Ferret as Pam Bigmore
• Claire Sawyer as Melanie Brace-Girdle
• Simeon Pearl as Hamish Bigmore
• Richard Murdoch as Worshipful Wizard
• Andrew Read as Thomas Grey
• Adele Silva as Fenella Fudd
• Christopher Mitchell as Ron Bigmore
• Sanjiv Madan as Prince
• Pat Coombs as Miss Flavia Jelley
• Vernon Dobtcheff as Wizard Marks
• Robin Driscoll as Sgt. Sevenoaks

References

1. ^ "Humphrey Carpenter; British Biographer". Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59831-2005Jan8.html. Retrieved 2011-04-22. 

External links

• Mr Majeika Homepage
• Mr Majeika at the Internet Movie Database