Monkey (television)

Monkey is the English language version of a Japanese television series based on the novel Journey to the West. It is also commonly called Monkey Magic (which is actually the title of the show's extremely catchy theme song).

The original series, Saiyûki, was made by Nihon Television[?], and ran for two seasons of 26 episodes each. The first season ran from October 1978 to April 1979. The second season ran from November 1979 to May 1980. Both seasons had footage shot on location in northwest China and inner Mongolia.

The English-language version, Monkey, was produced by the BBC and debuted on British television screens in November 1979. It ran for 39 episodes (leaving out some episodes from the second season). The script for the dubbed dialogue was written by David Weir[?].

Monkey has also been screened in Australia and New Zealand, but not in the United States (for copyright reasons) — although Saiyûki was screened on a local Japanese-language TV station in California during the early 1980s.

Monkey is a cult favourite in the countries where it has been shown. Among the features that have contributed to its cult appeal are the catchy theme song, "Monkey Magic" (often the only thing people can remember about the series); the dubbed dialogue, spoken in a variety of over-the-top "Oriental" accents; and the fact that the young priest Tripitaka was played by a woman.

Characters

Original Chinese name	Japanese name	Actor	English name	Dub actor
Xuan Zang	Sanzouhoushi	Masako Natsume[?]	Tripitaka	Maria Wahlberg[?]
Sun Wukong	Songoku	Masaaki Sakai[?]	Monkey	David Collings[?]
Zhu Bajie	Chohakkai	s1: Toshiyuki Nishida[?] s2: Tonpei Hidari[?]	Pigsy	Peter Woodthorpe[?]
Sha Wujing	Sagojo	Shiro Kishibe[?]	Sandy	Gareth Armstrong[?]