Geoffrey Bayldon plays the 11th-century wizard Catweazle, who escapes Norman soldiers by leaping into a pond and surfaces in 1970 rural Surrey, convinced electricity is “elec-trickery” and a telephone is the “telling bone.” He takes refuge in a disused water tower dubbed Castle Saburac, befriending farmer’s son Edward “Carrot” Bennet (Robin Davies) who spends thirteen episodes smuggling him food and concocting cover stories. Each week Catweazle fumbles spells, hypnotises witnesses into forgetting him, and clutches his toad Touchwood for luck, sighing “Nothing works” until the closing moment when everything finally does.
Series two relocates to Hertfordshire, swaps Carrot for stately-home boy Cedric (Gary Warren), and turns the plot into a scavenger hunt: one magical riddle per episode, the answer promised for the thirteenth. Peter Butterworth reappears as a new character, the batty gardener Groome, while Peter Sallis, Hattie Jacques and Paul Eddington drop in for single-episode cameos. The tone tilts toward farce, the water tower becomes a derelict railway hut called Duck Halt, and Catweazle now hums the theme tune to himself while bungling hexes.
Shot on 16mm around Guildford and Brickendon, the programme aired Sunday teatimes on ITV, winning the Writers’ Guild Best Children’s Drama Script award in 1971. Richard Carpenter novelised both runs, artist George Adamson illustrated them, and Look-in strip cartoons kept the character in playgrounds long after repeats ended. A German cinema version starring Otto Waalkes arrived in 2021, but the original survives on Talking Pictures TV and a 40th-anniversary DVD boxset crammed with Bayldon’s memories and Carpenter’s unproduced 21st-century screenplay, found among his papers after he died walking his dog in 2012.
Production Details
ITV1 / 2 Seasons / 26 Episodes / 1970
Created by: Richard Carpenter
Showrunner(s): Joy Whitby
Writer(s): Richard Carpenter
Producer(s): Carl Mannin, Quentin Lawrence
Cinematography: Kenneth Talbot, Arthur Lavis
Main Cast
Geoffrey Bayldon as Catweazle
Charles Tingwell as Mr. Bennet
Moray Watson as Lord Collingford
Neil McCarthy as Sam Woodyard
Robin Davies as Carrot
Elspet Gray as Lady Collingford
Gary Warren as Cedric Collingford
Peter Butterworth as Groome
Gwen Nelson as Mrs. Gowdie
John Welsh as Colonel Dickenson
Patricia Hayes as Mrs. Skinner
Bernard Hepton as Cyril Fitton
