Gogs
/
TITLE “Gogs” by Deiniol Morris* and Michael Mort*
STUDIO/SCHOOL Aaargh! Animation
The series depicts the Gogs comically as being mind-bogglingly stupid and struggling to navigate and avoid the perils of an exotic, prehistoric land inhabited by dinosaurs, prehistoric mammals, giant insects, human-eating plants, and other exotica. Even the primeval landscape is a danger, likely to erupt in a volcano or collapse in an earthquake, and the world is wracked by powerful lightning and thunderstorms…
Gogs!, or simply Gogs, is a Welsh claymation-style animated television series that took the form of a sitcom, originally aired on S4C in 1993, and aired in the rest of the UK on the BBC in 1996. Gogs has since been aired internationally, and still enjoys re-runs on occasion. Gogs revolves around a family clan of dumb, primitive, and socially inept cavemen in a fantasy prehistoric Stone Age setting, and contained much dark comedy, various toilet humor-based gags, and gross-out situations; for example, the cavemen losing control of their bodily functions. It also featured their often comedic daily struggle for survival and attempts to advance their technology and society, such as creating fire and often failing miserably, comically, and absurdly in the act. In the Welsh language, the term 'Gogs' is slang for 'Gogledd' which translates as 'North' and 'gogs' as 'Northerners'.
The originators of Gogs, schoolfriends Deiniol Morris and Siôn Jones – both Welsh speakers from Bethesda in North Wales decided that the single syllable word 'Gog' just had the right sound and a simple, direct quality which seemed to lend itself well to the primitive nature of the cave family. The show is more oriented towards an adult audience than other claymation television series such as The Trap Door or Wallace and Gromit, which are more child-friendly than Gogs. Although often called a children's television program, the "grungy" Gogs with its adult humor-based gags tended to be shown after the watershed, and so was often referred to as "claymation for the post-pub generation". There was an intention by Jones, Morris, and Mort to rebel against the 'cleaning up' of the comedic cartoon 'violence' with which they had grown up.
Later VHS and DVD releases carried a parental guidance rating. The original series contained only five episodes each of around five to six minutes long. After winning numerous awards a second series was commissioned with episodes running at a similar length, bringing the total number of episodes of the two series to thirteen in number.
