Stop Frame Productions

Brian Cosgrove and Mark Hall first met while both were students at Manchester College of Art and Design, which is now part of Manchester Metropolitan University.^[5] They later became co-workers at Granada Television, where they produced television graphics.^[5]

Hall left his job in 1969 and founded his own production company, Stop Frame Productions.^[5] Cosgrove joined the company shortly after its establishment.^[5] Their first projects, for Stop Frame, included public service films and television commercials for such companies as the TVTimes.^[5] From 1971 to 1972, the company released the animated series, The Magic Ball, which they created in a renovated shed located in the yard of Cosgrove's father-in-law.^[5] Hall directed two animated productions for Stop Frame, Captain Noah and His Floating Zoo, which was released in 1972, and the television series, Noddy, which aired in 1975.^[5] The company also produced opening credits and graphics for children's TV series such as Rainbow in 1972.^[5]

Cosgrove Hall Films

Stop Frame Productions halted production, and was closed in 1975.^[5] However, Cosgrove and Hall were able to find new work in animation, specifically due to their earlier work on the 1972 series Rainbow. The producer of Rainbow, Thames Television, an ITV company, created a new, subsidiary, animation studio called Cosgrove Hall Films in the following year, 1976.^[5] Thames hired and commissioned Cosgrove and Hall as lead animators to create new animated programmes, for this new studio, based on their earlier work with Rainbow. Thames Television also hired John Hambley as Cosgrove Hall Films' first executive producer.^[5] Its first series was Chorlton and the Wheelies, the lead role being named after the suburb of Manchester where the company was based (the other characters were placed on wheels as this made the stop-frame animation easier). The pop singer and musician Bernard Sumner worked for Cosgrove Hall from its founding until 1979 as a tracer.

Danger Mouse was one of the studio's earliest international successes. The studio made 161 episodes between 1981 and 1992. In each one, Danger Mouse, the world's greatest secret agent, and his well-meaning but useless sidekick Penfold, outwit the evil Baron Silas Greenback and various scoundrels. In 1983, the studio made a 75-minute film, The Wind in the Willows, based on Kenneth Grahame's classic story of the same name. It won a BAFTA award and an international Emmy award. Subsequently, the studio made a 52-episode TV series based on the characters between 1984 and 1990. All the music and songs for the feature and series were written by Keith Hopwood, late of Herman's Hermits and Malcolm Rowe. The Stone Roses guitarist John Squire worked on this series. Count Duckula was a spoof on the Dracula legend; its title character is the world's only vegetarian vampire. He aspires to be rich and famous. Originally he was a villain/henchman recurring in the Danger Mouse series, but got his own spin-off series in 1988 that rapidly became one of Cosgrove Hall's most successful programmes, and a Cosgrove Hall staple to spin-off characters from each successive cartoon. Both shows also aired on Nickelodeon in the U.S. during the late 1980s, and were popular in the ratings for the channel. In 1989, the studio produced a full-length feature based on Roald Dahl's The BFG.

Truckers, the first book in The Bromeliad, was the studio's first collaboration with the best-selling author Terry Pratchett. The 1992 series follows the efforts of a group of nomes, whose spaceship crash-landed on Earth 15,000 years ago, to return home. In 1993, the ownership of Cosgrove Hall was transferred to Anglia Television, following the removal of Thames' ITV licence and, following a series of takeovers and mergers, ownership finally belonged to ITV plc. In 1997, Cosgrove Hall Films produced two series for Channel 4 based on Wyrd Sisters and Soul Music, two novels from Pratchett's Discworld series.

One of the studio's specialities was producing programmes for young children, such as Noddy's Toyland Adventures, Bill and Ben, and Andy Pandy for the BBC. The latter two series were based on classic characters from the 1950s. In the mid 2000s, Cosgrove Hall worked on a new version of Postman Pat. The studio also animated Ghosts of Albion, the BBC's first fully animated webcast. Website visitors could learn about the production and help to develop the story. Cosgrove Hall produced Scream of the Shalka, a Doctor Who animated story for the BBC website. In 2006, they animated the missing first and fourth episodes of the Doctor Who serial The Invasion for a DVD release.

In 2008, shortly after Granada Television became the only surviving franchisee of Independent Television in England and Wales, all except four staff were made redundant by ITV, and Cosgrove Hall moved 'in house' to the Granada Television Studios in Manchester, ending over 30 years of the studio in Chorlton. The company's owner, ITV Granada, was not very interested in investing in Cosgrove Hall, and a financial review decided that the company was no longer viable. The British animation production industry was struggling due to increasingly tough competition from state-subsidised production in other countries where the industry was growing and very buoyant.

The company was again put under review by ITV plc in October 2009, being absorbed, and ceasing to exist, a few months later. Cosgrove Hall was developing Theodore, a CGI-animated series, when ITV absorbed the company. The land occupied by Cosgrove Hall's studios, in Albany Road, Chorlton, adjacent to the town's telephone exchange, which had stood empty for two years, was finally sold in the summer of 2010 to a housing development company. The intention was to demolish the historic studios and build retirement flats. During 2012, the studios were eventually demolished as part of the above development. Urban explorers who visited the site during the demolition found and photographed some models and backgrounds used in previous productions. Coincidentally, during April of that year it was announced that during the past summer, prior to the death of Mark Hall, he and Brian Cosgrove had pitched the idea of resurrecting the brand to possible investors.

Brian Cosgrove became the executive producer at CHF Entertainment, (defunct 2019), as was Hall until his death. On 18 November 2011, Cosgrove Hall Films closed down due to Mark Hall’s death of cancer at the age of 75.^[1] Now, CHF Entertainment are actively working on a number of television series, including Pip Ahoy!, which is aimed at preschool children, and HeroGliffix, which is aimed at older children.

Films

• The Talking Parcel (Thames for ITV, 1978) (TV film)
• Ersatz (1978) (directed by Chris Taylor)
• Cinderella (Thames for ITV, 1979) (TV special)
• The Pied Piper of Hamelin (Thames for ITV, 1981) (TV special)
• The Wind in the Willows (Thames for ITV, 1983) (TV film)
• The Reluctant Dragon (Thames for ITV, 1987) (TV special)
• A Tale of Two Toads (Thames for ITV, 1989) (TV film)
• The BFG (1989 film)
• The Fool of the World and the Flying Ship (Thames for ITV, 1990) (TV special)
• Peter and the Wolf (1995) (TV special) (animation)
• BBC Children in Need - Small People (stop-motion segments for 1998 promo)
• Mr Scruff (music video) (co-production with Four23Films)

Short films

• The Sandman (Channel 4, 1991) (short film)
• Welcome to the Discworld (1996) (short film) (co-production with Carrington Productions International)
• Blink (2001) (short film)
• One Night (2001) (short film, directed by Brian Demoskoff)
• The Trojan Horse (2001) (short film) (followed by Tindersticks: Dying Slowly)

Television series

Pilots

• Danger Mouse The Great Bone Idol (1979)(later redone into the episode of the same name in 1983)
• Danger Mouse The Mystery of the Lost Chord (1980)(Also re-edited and re-dubbed, becoming Who Stole the Bagpipes? (episode 2 of season 1)08))

• SuperTed (1975)
• Trash (Nickelodeon, 1989)
• The Crowville Chronicles (Nickelodeon, 1989)
• The Mutinearlies (1993) (co-production with BBC Enterprises Ltd)
• Mungie (1996) (co-production with BBC Animation Unit)
• The Story of Odysseus (1996) (co-production with Carrington Productions International)
• The Wot-a-Lots (later known as The Beeps) (directed by Sarah Ball) (1997)
• Meet the Frankensteins (1998)
• The Little Grey Men (written by Steve Walker) (1998)
• Winnie the Pooh (1999) (pilot for a stop-motion direct-to-video version of the popular Disney adaption by Bridget Appleby)
• Eloise (2000) (co-production with The itsy bitsy Entertainment Company and Cartoon Saloon)^[6]
• Mouth and Trousers (2000)
• The Thwarting of Baron Bolligrew (2001)
• Porter and Daughter (2001) (Engie Benjy pilot, co-production with ITEL)
• Junglekids (2001)
• F1: Race for the Future (2001)
• Saturday Night Livestock (2001)
• The Inbreds (2002) (pilot for adult animated series, once launched an official website)
• The Kittens (2002) (Failed pilot for an Atomic Kitten animated series)
• Shelltown (2003)
• CodeWarriors (2004) (co-produced with Granada)
• The Rag Pack (2004) (co-production with VGI Entertainment)
• The Slums (2004) (co-production with Streetplay Design Ltd)
• Super Hero High (2004)
• Harold's Planet (2004)
• Beat Freaks (2004) (co-production with Spin Entertainment and Mainframe Entertainment)
• Octopus and Worm (2005)
• The Carrotty Kid (2005) (once launched an official website)
• Wobbly Horse (2005)
• The Mystics (2005)
• The Boy Who Kicked Pigs (2005)
• Hamster in a Cage (2006)
• A Break From The Old Routine (2007) (co-production with S4C)
• My Neighbour is an Evil Genius (2007)
• Roger to the Rescue (2007)
• The Princess Bumblees (2007)
• Squidge and the Hardnuts (2008)
• Ruby to the Rescue (CBeebies, 2009) (co-production with Nelvana)

Other

• I Love 1981 (2001) (Danger Mouse's interview animation for BBC documentary)
• The Oddkinsons - A United Family (2003) (webcast, co-production with Manchester United)
• Doctor Who (2003 - 2007) (Scream of the Shalka webcast, an animated reconstruction of The Invasion and the televised serial The Infinite Quest)
• Ghosts of Albion (BBCi, 2003) (Legacy webcast)
• Sorted (2004) (3-minute animated fill-ins for Libra Television and Discovery Kids UK)
• Love on a Saturday Night (2004) (additional animated fill-in graphics for LWT)
• Top 10 Conspiracy Theories (2004) (animated graphics for Liberty Bell and Channel 5)