Описание
The show features the two characters facing mostly self-made problems, trying to solve them using any possible and impossible tools and construction gadgets. This leads to even more problems and yet, eventually, the two manage to get a working result with a mostly surprising solution.
According to the authors, it is the manual ineptitude that inspires the stories. The humour is not the only feature of the show. Another feature is having an optimistic approach towards life. The two characters always get into problematic situations, but they never give up until they solve the problem in imaginative ways.[1]
The show is also memorable for its soundtrack, composed by the late Petr Skoumal, of which the main parts consist of the theme song and a harmonica tune.
The two characters first appeared in a 1976 short film entitled Kuťáci (The Tinkers). Later, the characters appeared in more shorts, making their own series on Slovak TV entitled ... A je to! (... And that's it!), where they got their final look. The two handymen got their names Pat and Mat in 1989, and this became the name of the show.
While creating the two characters, the authors had in mind especially entertainment for adults, but the show became popular with all audiences. However, in former Czechoslovakia, the first 29 episodes of the series could have been produced as children's TV programme only, in the short's format of 7–9 minutes.
Thanks to its distinct lack of spoken dialogue, the show became popular throughout the world, being aired in nations that include Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic and Slovakia), Sweden, Syria, Iraq, Poland, former Yugoslavia, Iceland, Denmark, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Brazil, Finland, Japan, Norway, Spain, Iran, Hungary, Jordan, South Africa, and South Korea. In the Netherlands, the characters are given dubbed dialogue (with the voices of Kees Prins and Siem van Leeuwen)
In 1990, shortly after the communist regime collapsed and Czechoslovakia became more open to the world (and later the Czech and Slovak republics), Lubomír Beneš founded his own AIF Studio in Prague (production) and Zürich (marketing, sales, financing), where he and his team produced 14 more episodes, and introduced all 49 of them to the international market.
Three years after Beneš's death in 1995, his studio went into bankruptcy, igniting some copyright issues over the characters and the 50th episode, which therefore was never released. In the meantime, Beneš's son Marek founded his own studio, Patmat film. Production of episodes was resumed in 2002 by Ateliéry Bonton Zlín, resulting in 28 episodes produced by three studios (Ateliéry Bonton, Anima and Patmat) in just three years. Many crew members were veterans who worked on the original TV series.
The characters were revived once again in 2011 by Beneš for a new series, Pat a Mat na venkově (Pat & Mat in the Country). The pilot, Postele (The Beds), produced in 2009, premiered at the 50th Zlín Film Festival in 2010.[2] Twelve more episodes followed from 2011 to 2015, produced at Patmat film and filmed in 16:9. Beneš directed and wrote all 13 episodes. The episodes were released on DVD in 2013 and received their TV premiere on the Dutch channel VPRO on 9 June 2013. New episodes are currently in production.[3]
