Monkey

The Toynbee Convector's recent post on Chinese Pilgrims reminded me of the wonderful comedy action TV series from the late 1970s Monkey, based somewhat loosely on Wu Cheng-En's classic Chinese novel The Journey to the West, which I then read in Arthur Waley's much abbreviated translation. The novel, in turn, was based on legends surrounding a real Chinese monk's pilgrimage to India to obtain Buddhist scriptures.

The TV series was a Japanese production atrociously dubbed into English by the BBC. Youtube has the opening sequence and this extract from one of the episodes to give you the flavour:



I was most put out on my recent visit to London to see that I'd just missed an opera based on the story of Monkey.