Review: Pat a Mat kutí (Part I)

All of the newest Pat & Mat episodes are out, so it's time to take a look at each one of them and the series as a whole. This two-part post will feature my comments about the series, mini reviews and tidbits. All of the episodes will be available on the official YouTube channel by Monday - all episodes have already been aired on Poland's TVP ABC.

I would generally describe Pat a Mat kutí as: okay to good. I stand by my comment that it's the series I enjoyed most from the three produced from 2018 to 2020 and there are several reasons for it. By and large, I was indifferent towards the first series (my opinion has changed for some episodes, though), more pleased with the second and even more pleased with the third. However, I would understand if some people prefered the second or first series because this is the most inconsistent of the three - it often felt like hit-and-miss and it's a mixed bag: there were some episodes I truly enjoyed, some I enjoyed less and some I did not like. Overall and in this context, this variety is to me more interesting than most episodes being on a similar level and not overly ambitious. As always, your opinion in the comments would be appreciated.

The title, Pat a Mat kutí, is basically saying Pat and Mat do handymen stuff. That's understandable as the title is more a placeholder than anything else. The series is just Pat and Mat. However, it's interesting then that this particular series is not that much about DIY at all. A more apt title would have been Pat & Mat: Food (and else) as only five of the episodes don't have anything to do with food or drinks. I don't have a problem with that as long as the episodes are entertaining and for the most part, they are. Conversely, the first series had no episodes explicitly about food.

Pat and Mat making dough

This series had the highest percentage of animation produced in Czechia (6/13 episodes - almost half). That's a big plus for me as even though the Chinese animators (Update, July 2020: Info on the Chinese studio, Steamworks Studio, has come up - click here for details) handled the series mostly OK up to this point, they can't replace two animators who have a combined 55 years of experience on the show. Also, the Czech episodes from this series were visually much more pleasing than those from the first due to their lighting (the Chinese have a distinct purplish hue). The first series definitely looked way too bright and overblown. Compare two pictures from the website, first and third series:

This series features a nicer array of colors that look more balanced, even if the series as a whole still looks, as a friend noticed, sterile compared to pre-2014 episodes, as that's when a drastic change to the lighting was made, presumably due to new equipment. I also found the music in this series to be the most enjoyable. I especially liked Zdeněk Zdeněk's tune that plays near the end of Palačinky, Potrubní pošta and Chleba (and probably some others) when the two think they are approaching a solution. As such, I would rate this series the best in the context of the three 13-part "seasons". Not on the overall level of Pat a Mat na venkově, but continual progress is present.

Episode lists: 79-91 (Pat a Mat na venkově)

When word first appeared of another Pat & Mat series in the making, it was via an announcement of the Zlín Film Festival's screening of the first episode, Postele. That was back in 2010. Another announcement came a year later, when Papírový servis was shown at the same festival a year late.

Further news did not appear online before a whole batch of eight episodes was released to TV in 2013, notably to Dutch VPRO, where they premiered on 9 June 2013. At that time these episodes were not listed anywhere (not even on the studio's official website), so I was left to make my own list. I made sure that Postele and Papírový servis were first and second due to their festival appearances, while the order of the rest of the 2011 and 2012 episodes was just a guess. I posted that list to Wikipedia hoping someone will eventually correct my wrong guesses, but nobody did. The official website of the studio lists the episodes in alphabetical order, the DVDs following them. As such, the episode listings of 2011 and 2012 available online are almost surely wrong.

Starting from 2014, Patmat film published regular updates from the studio when a new episode started production, so the last five episodes were indeed listed correctly.

UPDATE: Some time after writing this post, I noticed that the first eight episodes of this series were released on the Czech DVD Pat & Mat 9 while the series was still in production.

DVD Cover

The DVD featured the episodes in chronological order, so I updated my list to reflect that order of episodes.

Episode list: 51-78

The listing of the 2002-2004 episodes now appears to be pretty simple, though that wasn't always the case. This is what it looked like when the episodes were originally released:

	51	2003		Opékají špekáčky
	52	2003		Opravují střechu
	53	2003		Černá bedýnka
	54	2003		Kolečka
	55	2003		Psí bouda
	56	2003		Natírají podlahu
	57	2003		Skleník
	58	2003		Houpačka
	59	2003		Nezvaný návštěvník
	60	2003		Bodygárdi
	61	2003		Natírají okna
	62	2002		Puzzle
	63	2003		Velikonoční vajíčko
	64	2003		Štíhlá linie
	65	2003		Automat
	66	2003		Autodráha
	67	2003		Akvárium
	68	2003		Zavařují
	69	2003		Rogalo
	70	2004		Hrají golf
	71	2004		Někam to zapadlo
	72	2004		Kopají bazén
	73	2004		Věší krajinu
	74	2004		Vánoční stromeček
	75	2003		Vánočka
	76	2003		Stůňou
	77	2003		Fax
	78	2003		Jahody

This is the order in which they appeared on the Pat & Mat fansite. That order was taken over from the DVDs which featured these episodes for the first time. Some obvious errors can be seen here as episodes with earlier production years appear out of sequence (2003 after 2004). This was corrected later on and the current list is also the order in which these episodes premiered on Czech TV bar the pilot Puzzle, which erroneously premiered as the last part of the 2003 package instead of the first.

These episodes were produced in three different studios for the same buyer. Their lists did not follow the production order, but were divided by studios, with different episodes from the same studio grouped together.

Episode order: 1-35

Before I started writing about Pat & Mat, I wanted to make a separate page with their filmography so far. This would be useful later on and there is no place on the Internet which has this information in complete or correct form. When talking about its preciseness, an important reservation must be mentioned. The production order of several episodes on my list is most likely wrong. To figure out how that is possible, we must first look at who originally published the episode lists in the first place and what's wrong within those lists. An important note: an official production list of the first series' episodes has never been posted! The first post will cover the episodes 1-35.

Episodes 1-35

The aiF Studio list

The first available list of Pat & Mat episodes, containing the first 50 episodes, looked like this:

Click for a better view - the original list published by the aiF Studio website, still accessible here.

Even though the list seems OK at first and follows the different stages of Pat & Mat series well enough, a more ardent view will spot some very obvious errors. They affect episodes here numbered 23, 24, 29, 32 and 35. They are completely out of place just by their production years alone. Gramofón is from 1981, yet follows an episode made in 1984, a year later than 24. 32 and 35 are from 1989, while the rest of the 30-35 section is from 1990. As such, those episodes are completely in the wrong order. (BTW, the aiF episodes seem to be in the correct order, which can especially be confirmed for the 1994 episodes.)

Even though this list had some serious errors, when Ateliéry Bonton Zlín brought the 1976-1990 episodes to DVD for the first time in the early 2000s, they took this order of episodes verbatim, leaving episodes here numbered 23 and 24 to languish on DVDs on which they did not belong.