Urpo and Turpo
Animated television series, directed by Liisa Helminen and Marjut Rimminen, based on Hannele Huovi's books
A Finnish stop-motion animated television series for children, based on Hannele Huovi's books. Teddy bears Urpo and Turpo live on a bookshelf in the children's room and are voracious readers, particularly of the classics.
Marjut's directorial approach was to emphasise the bears' imaginations and to film what they saw from a child's eye level. Each episode begins from the bookshelf and rebuilds the rest of the bedroom into somewhere else. A stack of clean folded laundry becomes the princess's pile of mattresses; toy blocks scribbled in marker pen turn into a castle's keep; a plastic saw and a tea-towel apron set up a hospital. The imagined worlds are built out of whatever is already on the carpet.
She paced the two bears differently in the animation. Turpo, the red one, leaps before he thinks: spontaneous action and perpetual movement. Urpo, in grey, is pensive and sensitive, with a lively imagination. Turpo lurches from one pose to the next; Urpo lingers, looks, considers.
You don't need to speak slowly and loudly to children. Small minds move fast and anything but linearly. From whim to whim, jumping wildly from one thing to another.
Marjut Rimminen, Kotiliesi, 4 October 1996
Urpo and Turpo are without a doubt Finland's funniest bears. Children, adults and critics alike fell in love first with the books and then with the autumn animated series. For animator Marjut Rimminen, the series was a new challenge.
Kirsi Riipinen, Kotiliesi, 4 October 1996
Urpo and Turpo, better than Toy Story.
Ilta-Sanomat, film review, 1996
- Episodes on Yle Areena; on DVD from VLMedia (2019)
- 🏅 Valtion laatutuki, 1996, the Finnish state quality award
- 🥉 Bronze Elephant, 1997 Golden Elephant International Children's Film Festival, Hyderabad
- Monitoro Award, 1998