Pan Tau

Pan Tau (Czech for "Mr. Tau") is a character created for a children's television series. There were 33 episodes in 3 series made by the Czechoslovak Television (ČST) in cooperation with Barrandov Studios and the West German TV network Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR). A pilot film was shot in 1966, and 33 episodes were made from 1970 until 1979. The project ended with a feature film in 1988. The protagonist Pan Tau, who generally didn't speak and communicated through pantomime, was played by Otto Šimánek (1925–1992). The series was written by Ota Hofman and directed by Jindřich Polák. The stories were generally funny but contained some kind of problem for a child, and here Pan Tau found the way to solve the problem. Pan Tau always had a gentle expression and a friendly smile, he was elegantly dressed in a stroller, with an umbrella and a white carnation in the lapel. Foremost, he was famous for his magic bowler hat. By tapping on his hat, Pan Tau was able to change his appearance into a puppet, to conjure up miscellaneous objects or to do other magic. His most characteristic behaviour is that he would help children who were experiencing some sort of difficulties in-between their dreams and reality, like finding a place for skiing, settling family problems on Christmas, and even give a boy a good time at a fair when he is supposed to have piano lessons. To adults, he usually remained invisible. Although Czechoslovakia then was under a Communist regime, this never was very obvious for the viewers. And Pan Tau was a popular children program in several countries at both sides of the Iron Curtain (such as in both West and East Germany and also in the Scandinavian countries), which also appealed to the adult parents in a certain degree.