Angelina Ballerina (TV series)

Angelina Ballerina is a British animated children's television series based on the book series of the same name by author Katharine Holabird and illustrator Helen Craig. The show had 39 15-minute-long episodes, as well as three longer specials, which first aired from 2001 to 2006. The series was produced by HiT Entertainment and Grand Slamm Children's Films. It aired on PBS and PBS Kids Sprout in the United States, where it was presented by Connecticut Public Television and CITV in the United Kingdom. In 2009, it received a reboot/continuation called Angelina Ballerina: The Next Steps, which lasted for four seasons from September 5, 2009, to November 13, 2010.

Plot

The original series is about Angelina Mouseling, a young female mouse who loves to dance ballet, and her family and classmates. Finty Williams performed the voice of Angelina, and her real-life mother Judi Dench performed the voice of Miss Lilly, her old ballet teacher.

In The Next Steps, Angelina and her friends celebrate music and songs and bring many forms of dance to life including ballet, tap dancing, jazz, classical, ethnic, and rock-n-roll.

Broken Leg Qualities

In General

1. Most of the characters are flanderized as they went from kind, humble, and passionate to bland, especially in the reboot's case, and have little to no depth whatsoever. Examples include:
   • Angelina herself has gone from a sweet, passionate, and friendly ballerina in the book series to a selfish, jealous, and bratty crybaby who wants to become popular in the ballet dancing, which totally makes her a bad role model for kids in the original series.
     • Despite being the main protagonist, she can act very nasty and horrible at times, especially if she's jealous.
     • She has no character development as while she does learn her lesson at the end, she continues to make the same mistakes again.
     • She rarely, if ever, gets scolded or punished for her actions, making her a Karma Houdini.
     • She even had a big meltdown in some episodes, such as "Angelina's Baby Sister" and "The Ballet Dance".
     • In "The Silver Locket", she goes criminal mode and steals her mother's locket without asking.
     • In "The Ballet Tickets", she and Alice sneak into a theatre.
     • She's not good at looking after her cousin Henry or her baby sister Polly.
       • She even loses Henry at the carnival in "Angelina at the Fair".
       • When she had to look after her baby sister Polly in "Show and Tell", the latter suddenly causes chaos at school.
     • She even ruins the whole show because of Valentine and Sophie in "Angelina's Princess Dance".
   • The Pinkpaws Twins, Priscilla and Penelope, are very unlikeable as they belittle and bully everyone, even each other. They're also very bratty and selfish.
   • Sammy Watts is just the stereotypical bully.
   • Mrs. Hodgepodge is the grouchy neighbor.
   • Henry is just the younger tag-along cousin.
   • Angelina's best friend, Alice Nimbletoes, while likable, is a punching bag who just eats too much junk food.
   • William Longtail, while likable as well, could be seen as a Gary Stu as he lacked any flaws in his character.
   • Miss Lilly is a Russian stereotype.
   • Valentine and Sophie aren't very talented dancers and quite demanding.
   • Phoebe is the worst offender. She's crazy and will immediately go into a ghost about more cheese.
2. The plots, such as Angelina picking up a coin thinking she has a lucky penny and later losing it, Angelina and Alice losing their tickets to the ballet dance, and Miss Lilly coming to Angelina's cottage for dinner, are either unoriginal, boring, uninteresting, stale, poor clichéd or even bad plots.
3. Henry is a complete coward in "Angelina at the Fair", being afraid of all the rides and even crying or screaming because Angelina wants him to go on them.
   • In the same episode, Angelina's mum gives her an allowance so she can take Henry to the fair when she hasn't done any work to earn it.
4. Angelina and Alice can sometimes be punching bags, such as when they realize that the tickets to the ballet dance are sold out in "The Ballet Dance", when the Pinkpaws Twins make fun of them, or when Angelina slips on the beads that fell off her necklace. Not that Angelina doesn't deserve it, however.
5. The show has slow pacing, but it's done very poorly.
6. While the voice acting is passable, for the most part, it features crying and sobbing like if they're sad and emotional.
7. There's a handful of bad episodes that include:
   • "The Gift"
   • "Angelina at the Fair" (possibly the worst episode of the show)
   • "The Ballet Tickets"
   • "Midnight Muddle"
   • "Miss Lilly Comes to Dinner"
   • "Lucky Penny"
   • "Angelina and Grandma"
   • "Angelina's Surprise"
   • "No Match for Angelina"
   • "Angelina's Baby Sister" (while it ended Season 1 decently at the end, it was quite depressing to see Angelina crying, but shocking to see her throw a massive hissy fit)
   • "Anya's Visit"
   • "Sammy's Club"
   • "Angelina and the Silver Locket"
   • "Angelina's Princess Dance"

Original Series

1. The main reason as to why this show has been generally dislike is its tone, when compared to HIT Entertainment's previous children's animated shows, Angelina Ballerina has somewhat of a more drama and darker tone, with some mean-spirited and even very out-of-place dark moments that's incredibly jarring, especially since the original Angelina Ballerina book series was more lighthearted.
   • While there's nothing wrong with making a darker television series/show be made into a children's program, those kind of shows that go that route (e.g. Samurai Jack/SWAT Kats of Cartoon Network, Avatar: The Last Airbender of Nickelodeon, Gargoyles/Mighty Ducks of Disney and even Yu-Gi-Oh of 4Kids) are from programs that are aimed towards older children and teenagers, while this show is aimed for toddlers and little kids.
2. Too many unnecessary fadeouts.
3. Non-existent or bad morals, especially in the original.
4. Poor grasp from the source material.
5. Overall due to its tone, Angelina Ballerina feels more fitting as a Cartoon Network/Nickelodeon/Disney program, not something out of PBS Kids/Sprout.

The Next Steps

1. This continuation was barely needed as basically no one asked for it. This clearly could be seen when PBS Kids put it in random weekend slots before losing the rights, and Nick Jr. in the UK moved it to the graveyard slot less than 2 years after the premiere.
2. The CGI animation can be cheap, lazy, and unfinished, even for 2009 standards, which can be dated by the mid-2000s as in 2003 to 2006, which is shocking considering the animation was done in the United States.
   • Examples of this are the poor movement of the characters when they're jumping, bad shading, and stiff dancing motions, especially in this scene where Angelina dances to the flamenco.
3. Angelina, despite being redeemed and better behaved in The Next Steps, is much blander and becomes a huge Mary Sue, but she cries way less than the original series. Does that ring a bell?
4. Her friends also lack depth, even characters described as "mean", like Gracie, aren't that mean at all.
5. The setting and writing of this series lack much of charm of the original series.
6. Even slower and more boring pacing that will bore you out as it's just overall bland dancing and spinning.
7. Even more poor grasp from the original book.
8. The songs and the soundtrack are rather forgettable since the soundtrack resembles dated bubblegum pop songs from the mid-2000s.
9. The specials of this series are literally edited-together redubbed clips of the original, and half of these written in as flashbacks.

Good Qualities

1. The voice acting in both the original series and The Next Steps is passable.
2. The international dubs, while not great, are, at least, not as bad as the original English dub.
   • The French dub was pretty-well received in both the original series and The Next Steps.
3. The traditional animation in the original series is simple, but cute and adorable, light-hearted and relaxed, and almost flawless.
4. The Next Steps shows various dances and all kinds of music from around the world, but it's still mediocre at best due to the poor character redesigns, cheap, lazy, and unfinished CGI animation as mentioned above, and several characters from the original series being removed.
   • It may slightly be better than the original series.
   • It’s much more lighthearted and way less dark and dramatic than the original show.
5. The music is pleasant to hear, especially in the original series.
6. Some likable characters like Alice, Henry, Maurice and Matilda Mouseling, Miss Thimble, Miss Lilly, Anya, Valentine, Sophie, and Phoebe. Along with that, William, despite being a Gary Stu, is still a great character, particularly owing to how exceptionally gentlemanly he is for his age, and his crush on Angelina is rather endearing.
7. Despite being very heavily flanderized in this series, Angelina can sometimes have her original personality from the books.
8. There are a handful of good or decent episodes, including:
   • "Angelina in the Wings" (which started the show on a high note)
   • "Arthur the Butterfly"
   • "The Legend of Big Paw"
   • "The Ballerina Rag Doll"
   • "Rose Fairy Princess"
   • "Angelina and Anya"
   • "Alice's Present"
   • "The Gymnastics Championship"
   • "The Show Must Go On"
   • "The Big Performance"
   • "Angelina Sets Sail"
   • "The Anniversary Party" (which ended the show on a great note)
9. The books are much better than the two notorious adaptions.

Reception

The original series has a rating of 5.6/10 on IMDb whilst The Next Steps has a lower rating of 4.8.

Trivia

• AB was one of the most popular shows on Sprout, with the network caring for it more and giving it better treatment than PBS and Nick Jr. UK. Its titular character was featured in a lot of promos and both shows from the franchise had a lot of timeslots—one in the morning, one in the afternoon and one at night.
• Wikipedia once insisted that Justin Bieber voiced AZ, resulting in gullible wiki editors actually believing it, which has since been proven false.
• This show and its spin-off often aired in awkward weekend time slots on PBS. The original show was eventually taken off the air in 2009, years after the rights to said show and HiT's other programs that were on PBS Kids were handed over from CPT to WNET.
  • Likewise, the British Nick Jr. feed only showed the spin-off in its original timeslot for about a year and moved it Nick Jr. 2 for most of 2011. It was put back on the main channel in graveyard slots between late 2011 and 2014, all while almost never being promoted by the network or website. In 2015, they moved it back to Nick Jr. 2, where it aired in a daytime slot for a few months before it was moved back to its previous slot and pulled entirely the same year. Like before, the show did not receive any advertising whatsoever.
• In late 2015, it was reported that Mattel (who'd purchased HiT Entertainment) and 9 Story Media Group were partnering for revivals of Angelina Ballerina and Barney & Friends, both slated for 2017. As it turns out, these were simply distribution rights granted to the latter, as 2017 came and went with no news on either revival, although Barney would later get an all-CGI reboot announced for 2024, courtesy of Nelvana.
• In 2009, Red Rooster made toys for the show consisting of a spinning figure of Angelina, a headband, and a memory game for girls. The toys were paired alongside the Bob the Builder ones.
• Finty Williams and her mother Judi Dench worked together in the show.
• Some of the later books are adaptations of the show, which adapts the books themselves.
• When Katharine Holabird first conceived the original book, she imagined the characters as humans, but illustrator Helen Craig suggested that they be mice instead.
• The show has a small-but-devoted cult following.

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