Ghost of Faffner Hall

[Squall Leonhart]

I was going through an old tape and found a show called the Ghost Of Faffner Hall, I watched this for a little bit and was wondering why I never heard of this show before. I'm positive I heard Richard Hunt and Karen Prell. Can anybody tell me what this was about?

 

[Beauregard]

You certainly did hear Richard Hunt. Also Louise Gold was in the show.

Not sure why we don't talk about it much. Perhaps because it isn't released to video yet? But DVD's are coming out very soon (or last month, not sure), then I'm sure people will talk more.

 

[The Count]

Hi... Thought I'd come in and help some.
The Ghost of Faffner Hall...

The show only lasted for thirteen episodes, so I guess that's why not many people talk about it. Though I don't think that'd apply, since JHH also had thirteen episodes in its entire run.

What was GOFH about...
You know how all or most of the Children's Television Workshop's shows were made to have an educational purpose or core, right? Well, it goes like this.
Sesame Street to teach basic skills like letters and numbers, and other important topics or social skills like cooperation orsharing.
The Electric Company to teach about word sounds and different terms associated with various words like homonyms or how a word can change based on the first letter placed at the beginning of a group like Junk to Shrunk to Trunk in ther Letterman animated segments.
3-2-1 Contact to teach about science.
Square 1 Television, a personal favorite of mine, to teach about all the different aspects of mathematics.

And then they went to HBO and developed two shows in conjunction with that channel...
Encyclopedia, which was done with an entirely human cast, and The Ghost of Faffner Hall. GOFH was tooled a little like classic Muppet productions in the sense that each episode revolved around a different topic designed to teach music, with a special guest star for each episode. So GOFH was a sort of melding between Muppet and CTW styles of programming, creating the educational core.

The premise was that Fughetta Faffner, a ghost, still haunted the hall as she provided tuttelage to all the musical residents. Her distant living relative, Farkas Faffner, was now the legal owner of the hall and hating music, he wants to put an end to all the musical goings-on.
The hall was populated by new characters and old from both TMS like Boppity and the Flower-Eating Monster to SS with appearances by the Dinger.
Hope this helps and have a good weekend.

 

[Skekayuk]

The Count has provided a pretty full explanation. However, it is perhaps worth mentioning the show's six star puppeteers. Evenly divided between performers who puppeteer right-handed and those who puppeteer left-handed, they were:

As Fughetta Faffner (the title role) - Louise Gold (possibly the biggest starring roles she has done as a muppeteer)
As Farkas Faffner - Mak Wilson (because his character hated music, he rarely got to join in the show's musical numbers)

As The Wild Impressario - Richard Hunt
As Mimi (Riff's best friend - Karen Prell
As Riff (Mimi's best friend) - Mike Quinn

One other puppeteer (he doesn't seem to have had a reguler character though) was Richard Coombes.

Hope that helps

 

[TotallySpiesFan]

Muppet_DK, do you have the pic of Boppity, Flower-Eating Monster, and some Season 5 Frackles appearing in a GOFH episode?

 

[minor muppetz]

I have read that Hit released some episodes on DVD in england. Too bad their not in america. If there were appearances from some very minor characters from the muppets, then i wonder if hit would have edited them out or not. If any Sesame Street characters actually did appear, then I wonder if their scenes would be left in.

 

[MrsPepper]

I have never seen this show, or heard of it until not too long ago. So it's great to read about it.

 

[muppet_dk]

I have read that Hit released some episodes on DVD in england.

The relase has been push backed lot and now it's not listed for release in the near future.
Wonder if the same is gonna happend to the animal show. Its up for release 5/9, so lets see whats gonna happend to that, it's also been pushed back a few times.