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Grizzly Tales for Gruesome Kids (often nicknamed Grizzly Tales) is the generic trademarked title for a series of award-winning children's books by British author Jamie Rix which were later adapted into an animated television series of the same name produced for ITV. Known for its surreal black comedy and horror, the franchise was immensely popular with children and adults, and the cartoon became one of the most-watched programmes on CITV in the 2000s; a reboot of the cartoon series was produced for Nickelodeon UK and NickToons UK in 2011 with 26 episodes (split into 2 seasons) with the added tagline of Cautionary Tales for Lovers of Squeam!. The first four books in the series were published between 1990 and 2001 by a variety of publishers (such as Hachette Children's Group, Puffin, and Scholastic) and have since gone out of print but are available as audio adaptations through Orion Audiobooks, Audible and iTunes. The ITV cartoon was produced by Honeycomb Animation and aired between 2000 and 2007 with 6 seasons; reruns aired on the Nickelodeon channels along with the 2011 series.

Each book in the franchise contained several cautionary tales about children of many ages and the consequences of their antisocial actions. Due to how far-fetched and fantastical the stories could become, it is up to the reader whether they found the series frightening or amusing, but the franchise is usually categorised as children's horror. When the series was adapted for the CITV/Nickelodeon cartoons, the book chapters became ten-minute episodes that were narrated by comic actor Nigel Planer, and created by Honeycomb Productions, with author Rix as co-director.

The franchise received critical acclaim, noted by the themes of horror surrealism and adult paranoia blended with common children's book absurdity. The Daily Telegraph called said of the CITV cartoon, "Mix Dahl with Belloc and you can anticipate with glee these animated tales of Jamie Rix. Even William Brown's antics pale..." and The Sunday Times wrote: "They are superior morality stories and Nigel Planer reads them with a delight that borders on the fiendish."

Plot
The Grizzly Tales series features short stories about cautionary tales and imitates an episodic anthology horror (similar to The Twilight Zone or Tales from the Darkside) with each book chapter a different short story. The typical structure would be a brief glance at a main character's typical day in their life, followed by a change in their routine (e.g. a new possession comes their way or a decision made by them/a supporting character) which eventually goes wrong in a hoisted with their own petard way, with the story ending with the main character either being killed, mutilated, involuntarily shapeshifting, or kidnapped by something/someone supernatural. They usually star children whose misbehaviour (laziness, greediness, vanity, lying, etc.) is failed to be reined in by their parents or guardians, who vary from encouraging it, ignoring it, failing to be firm with their punishments, or do nothing because they are used to being submissive (and are sometimes the victims of their child's abuse). There are exceptions, however, as some stories are about adults, or set in the past, or are pastiches.

Development
The first story Rix ever created was The Spaghetti Man, after using this new cautionary tale as a white lie to his first son. It was about a little boy who refused to behave at the kitchen table and is kidnapped by an invisible force, that takes him to a factory to turn him into lasagne. Rix took note of how the lie had made his four-year-old eat all of his meals without hesitations, which would inspire a series that could scare children into behaving themselves. The story of the Spaghetti Man would be included in the franchise debut's Grizzly Tales for Gruesome Kids, which was published in 1990 by Scholastic. Its popularity led to three sequels: Ghostly Tales for Ghastly Kids (1995), Fearsome Tales for Fiendish Kids (1996), and More Grizzly Tales for Gruesome Kids (2001); the latter book was released as the first cartoon aired on CITV. Possibly due to the franchise gaining popularity, the first four books have been re-released numerous times amongst Puffin and Orion. A variety of illustrators designed the front covers, but the success of the CITV cartoon led to the front covers being redesigned by Honeycomb Productions to look like screencaps of the cartoon characters. After an unspecified amount of years, the books went out of print.

Six years later, Rix created a new series for the franchise, now named Grizzly Tales: Cautionary Tales for Lovers of Squeam!; eight books were published between 2007 and 2008, the ninth a compilation full of 12 previously-published stories from the first and second in the brand. This series borrowed heavily from the CITV cartoon's format by imitating its framing device style of a character telling the stories to the audience, whereas the previous book series was only a collection of short stories. This new character was The Night Night Porter, a creepy owner of a hotel (named The Hot Hell Darkness) that used vague anecdotes and proverbs to show the reader how they would relate to the stories he was about to tell, and would open his check-in book where the stories have been placed. After telling the stories, he would punish the misbehaving kids to spend eternity in one of his hotel rooms.

Locations of stories varied. Some took place in fictionalised versions of English towns (e.g. Colchester) and others did not (Saucy-by-Sea). Not all took place in the country of the franchise's origin: "It's Only a Game, Sport!" was set in Australia, for example. "The Chipper Chums Go Scrumping" is a pastiche of the works of Enid Blyton and is set in the Kentish countryside in 1952.
 * Recurring features

Naming conventions highlighted the humour. The Independent on Sunday pointed out, "Jamie Rix’s splendidly nasty short stories can be genuinely scary, but as the protagonists are obnoxious brats with names like Peregrine and Tristram, you may find yourself cheering as they meet their sticky ends." Some of the characters' surnames implied their roles in the story (Mr. and Mrs. Frightfully-Busy were workaholics, Johnny Bullneck is an aggressive school bully, and Serena Slurp is greedy) whereas the more ridiculous the family name is, the more unpleasant they are in the story: Fedora Funkelfink the con artist; and the upper-middle-class Crumpdump family, who trophy hunt to impress their spoilt children. "Knock Down Ginger", meanwhile, is set in a fictional town called Nimby, a notorious home for middle-class snobs. Some of the punishments that the horrible characters have are based on puns: loud-mouthed Dolores from "Silence is Golden" is taken to an alchemist and is turned into a gold statue; "Kiss and Make Up" was a double meaning title about a girl who used make up to look prettier so that she could have her first kiss with a handsome boy in her school. Other titles are pop-culture references ("Fatal Attraction", "The Big Sleep", "The Barber of Civil", "Monty's Python", etc.).

Story issues and morals were relatable to the reader (particularly the parents that would be reading to their children), such as television addiction, sibling rivalry, trying to fit in with their friends, personal hygiene, refusing to eat their dinner, punctuality, but others are about theft and deforestation, as well as an implied anti hunting message in "An Elephant Never Forgets". Supernatural characters varied from witch doctors (Doctor Moribundus, The Barber of Civil), poltergeists (The Spaghetti Man), to snake-oil salesmen. There were also fairies, talking animals, aliens, inanimate objects coming to life (such as drawings), and witches, as well as cursed objects, and absurd occurrences (such as piglets travelling across the countryside disguised as a man); other villains, like Farmer Tregowan, were regular people with extremely violent methods of punishment. Children could be shapeshifted, eaten alive, kidnapped, or turned into food. Due to many of the parents' child neglect and lack of discipline, many of the outcomes of their children's stories do not appear to affect their lives. Some of the workaholic parents are too busy to notice that their child has either been maimed or has disappeared and others are implied to be such insignificance in their children's lives that they do not appear as characters in the story. Meanwhile, happy (or bittersweet) endings were about the character learning from their bad behaviour and turning their lives around before things got worse.

Television series
In 1993, Honeycomb Productions founders Simon & Sara Bor had signed a deal with Central (later owned by Carlton Television) to create the cartoon Wolves, Witches and Giants. According to Simon, the then-head of Carlton Television, Michael Forte, had initially been hesitant to develop the project until Carlton took over Central, but he handed them a copy of Grizzly Tales for Gruesome Kids and advised them to "Get in touch with the author, and see if you can come up with something." After Wolves, Witches and Giants concluded in 1998, the Grizzly Tales for Gruesome Kids adaptation was created for CITV with the series' author Jamie Rix as co-director and co-screenwriter. It was produced by Honeycomb, as well as Grizzly TV, and Rix's production company Elephant Productions (later renamed Little Brother Productions) which he co-founded with Nigel Planer. Forte was executive producer for three series and was suceeded by David Mercer. Other producers included Clive Hedges (first two series) and Sarah Muller (three and four).
 * Grizzly Tales for Gruesome Kids (2000–2006)

This first adaptation of the book series aired on the ITV's CITV block between 2000 and 2007 with six seasons. Each episode had a framing device set in an old cinema (named The Squeam Screen) with its creepy caretaker and his spider companion, Spindleshanks. The adapted stories are short movies on film reels that the caretaker screens from the projector into the theatre, after he finishes talking to the audience about morals and proverbs that will later relate to the story of that episode, as he bullied Spindleshanks through malicious pranks and cowardice. These scenes are animated with Claymation whereas the adapted stories from the books were traditionally animated, then later animated in Adobe Flash. The stop-motion was animated by Richard Randolph and Nick Herbert, and the 2D animation was animated by Jon Miller, Daniel Mitchell, Oliver Knowles, Victoria Goy-Smith, Liam Williamson, Karen Elliott, and Christopher Bowles.

Episodes were faithful to the original story, however, there were some minor changes. For example, the Cluck family in the eponymous story "The Dumb Clucks" were renamed the Klutz family, and the title was expectantly adjusted. Other notable changes included the use of character models that were constantly reused in many episodes either with minor adjustments or not, alternating between main and background characters: the character model for Dorothy May Piranha from "The Piranha Sisters" is the same "actress" who was Savannah Slumberson in "The Grub-A-Blub Blub". However, the set character appearances occasionally led to an appearance deviation from how the character was described in the original story: the bullying Ginger Pie in "Knock Down Ginger" was described as a tall, overweight boy with pale skin and pale red hair, but his character model — the same one used for Ginger (no relation) in "The Chipper Chums Go Scrumping" (who was a boy implied to be very outdoorsy with his friends) — was a skinny boy with curly red hair. Loralilee's witch doctor cure in "Doctor Moribundus" was adapted out of the cartoon, replaced with the Squeam Screen caretaker's narration claiming that the cure was too disturbing to tell as the viewer is shown the outside her bedroom window, and Stinker's murder in "The Chipper Chums Goes Scrumping" is changed to becoming crippled.

The original four books in the series were adapted for the first four seasons (although some, such as "The Matchstick Girl", were never adapted) but the final two seasons featured new stories that would later appear in the Grizzly Tales: Cautionary Tales for Lovers of Squeam! books. The theme music was altered at this time with a completely different melody and a faster tempo than the one used at the beginning of the cartoon's run. The framing device with the caretaker and Spindleshanks disappeared and the end of the opening titles would cut to the projector being turned on.

The CITV series was airing as reruns on Nickelodeon when Honeycomb Productions announced in 2011 that a new series would be aired on NickToons UK in May. This new series would have a shortened, catchier name and be "reinvented for a modern audience with even more twisted, dark stories to delight children everywhere" but would remain to a formula similar to the newer book series — Grizzly Tales: Cautionary Tales for Lovers of Squeam! — despite the stories being completely new to the franchise. Other differences would be the location of the framing device, which was now at The Hot-Hell Darkness instead of the Squeam Screen cinema, and the animation: the hotel scenes were 3D animated and the stories were animated in 2D software. The cinema caretaker was now replaced by the re-invented books' The Night-Night Porter, his half-brother, who banishes horrible children to spend an eternity at his hotel. Nigel Planer and the crew returned for this series, and the show, although for a new generation, was as popular and successful as its predecessor.
 * Grizzly Tales (2011–12)

Episodes
Another example is the names of the characters Jerry and Tom from "The Nuclear Wart", which were renamed Terry and Jim, respectively (most likely to avoid any copyright issues with the American cartoon of the same name.)

Cast
This is a list of the cast that frequently appears in the two television adaptations.
 * The Squeam Screen caretaker: The caretaker of The Squeam Screen cinema (revealed online to be named Uncle Grizzly) is the only character who speaks in the CITV series and is voiced by Nigel Planer. He gives the audience morals, proverbs and examples of life lessons, as well as narrating the short movies. In the opening titles, he appears at the end of the sequence, walking up to the projection room to blow out his electric torch and grab a film reel out of a towering stack as he says, "You are welcome to Grizzly Tales for Gruesome Kids, a series of cautionary tales for lovers of squeam!" Not much is known about him from the series outside of being a surrogate mentor, however, he is prone to shapeshift his head into a variety of things to terrify the audience or Spindleshanks. Outside of the series, his character profile is available to view on the official Grizzly Tales website, which reveals that his personal favourite movie he has shown is first season's third episode "Grandmother's Footsteps".
 * Spindleshanks: A large spider that lives in The Squeam Screen cinema. He communicates non-verbally (through facial expressions) but occasionally squeaks. Uncle Grizzly constantly uses him for audience demonstrations but often as an excuse to bully, torture and abuse him for laughs. One ending to an episode showed that he had become a ghost, which made Uncle Grizzly cackle. He does not appear in the Nickelodeon series.
 * The Night Night Porter: The official narrator of the second book series, half-brother of Uncle Grizzly, and the owner of the Hot Hell Darkness hotel; voiced by Nigel Planer. He is similar to his cinema caretaker relative through being a mentor to the reader/audience, being the only other character in the television adaptations that speaks. He relishes in punishing children, particularly horrible ones, and shows off some of the tortures that his guests are receiving in their rooms.

Reception
The franchise received a positive reaction from critics, and audiences of many ages. The second cartoon programme frequently appeared on audience-rated favourite programme lists on Nickelodeon. A reporter for The Sunday Times noted "I played all five [audiobook adaptations] to my own junior jury aged 12, 7 and 5. They sat spellbound for 75 minutes, a rare event." Books for Your Children predicted that the series would be entertaining for everyone: "An excellent book of stories for all but the most timid ... the accumulation of grimness is also part of the effect, so older children can enjoy this collection by themselves and adults can have a marvellous time reading them to younger ones", whereas The Evening Standard encouraged it: “It may be a children's story, but many a modern-day trendy parent could watch and learn.” The School Librarian added: "Jamie Rix tells us that bad ghosts always stay that way but bad children can improve, which is reassuring because his stories are full of unpleasant children."

Merchandise
Kindle versions of the first four books were briefly available to buy in 2011.

The CITV cartoon was available for purchase on DVD in the UK and Northern Ireland, as well as Porchlight Entertainment in the USA and Time Life's Shock Records in Australia and New Zealand. The Nickelodeon cartoon was later released on DVD through the same respective companies, however, it was released in the UK and Northern Ireland with Abbey Home Media.

Nigel Planer was the narrator for this series and played Uncle Grizzly. He also narrated Fearsome Tales for Fiendish Kids on audiobook. Bill Wallis narrated More Grizzly Tales for Gruesome Kids and Grizzly Tales for Gruesome Kids, and Ghostly Tales for Ghastly Kids were both read by Andrew Sachs. Orion Audiobooks have also released full CD recordings of the books, read by Rupert Degas. Audio Go have re-released the original Grizzly Tales for Gruesome Kids audiobook on CD and download. Rix also recorded an audiobook which was released in 2009.

Awards and nominations
Both the books and the two television adaptations have received awards and nominations for their work.