Mr Majeika


Mr Majeika is a series of children's books written by Humphrey Carpenter and published between 1984 and 2006. It was adapted into a children's television series produced by TVS for ITV, and aired aired between 1988 and 1990. It starred Stanley Baxter as Mr. Majeika. The stories have also been broadcast on radio.
The first volume, Mr Majeika, was published in 1984 and was followed by Mr Majeika and the Music Teacher, Mr Majeika and the Haunted Hotel and The TV Adventures of Mr Majeika.

Plot

The focus of these stories is Mr. Majeika, a teacher at St Barty's Primary School. He is a wizard, as is apparent when he flies into Class Three's boring lesson on a magic carpet, which he then turns into a bicycle, confounding the headmaster.
He entertains them with magical trickery which bring lessons to life, whether it is providing chips during dinner for all the children, or turning the nasty Hamish Bigmore into a frog for his insolence. Whatever the consequences, Class Three students are sure that with Mr. Majeika around, they will not be bored again. A recurring character is Wilhelmina Worlock, a witch who first appeared as a music teacher and has turned up regularly since in various disguises.
In the television series, Mr. Majeika is an irrepressible wizard sent to "Britland" from the planet Walpurgis because he failed his O-level sorcery exam for the seventeenth time. He drops into the sleepy village of Much Barty, finding a post at St Barty's School as Class Three's new form-teacher, where he quickly befriends two of the children: Melanie Brace-Girdle and Thomas Grey. Both of these characters are also in the books, but Melanie is a much less important and very different type of character in the books, and is replaced by another character as female lead, Jody. Also in the books, Thomas has a twin brother called Pete.
Majeika enters into his magic with reluctance, however, because he is trying hard to behave himself on Earth, and because the Worshipful Wizard of Walpurgis is keeping an eye on him from above. All the same, trickery becomes more and more necessary, leading Majeika, Melanie and Thomas into some remarkable adventures. Their fun is despised, but usually prompted, by the horribly spoilt Hamish, a pupil so ghastly that his mere presence caused the resignation of the previous class teacher and frightened off the 79 applicants for the post. But one waggle of Mr. Majeika's oddly tufted grey hair is all that it takes for Bigmore to be put firmly in his place.

TV show

The comedy drama series was executive produced by Nigel Pickard. The series was written by Jenny McDade. Carpenter wrote the fourth book based on McDade's scripts, The Television Adventures of Mr Majeika. Three series of the programme were made, comprising twenty episodes in total. The first series had six episodes. The location for St. Barty's Primary School was Matfield House in Tonbridge, Kent.
Stanley Baxter stars as a wizard in Mr Majeika as the titular role. It was his debut appearance on a children's programme. His wife convinced him to take on the role after he expressed uneasiness about taking on the role. Baxter designed his character's suit, which Graham Keal of the Liverpool Daily Post described as a "strangely cut, tightly buttoned and stupendously loud tweed suit". Another suggestion he made was that a mystical lock of his character's hair quivers in anticipation of a magic spell.
The performers starring as students attending the Academy for the Sons and Daughters of Gentlefolk were Andrew Read, Claire Sawyer, and Simeon Pearl. The roles were their first in television.

Cast

Availability

There has been no commercial release of Mr Majeika on DVD in the UK. This is possibly due to ongoing rights issues after the production company, TVS, dropped out of the ITV network in 1992 and subsequently went through a number of take-overs. This problem affects the majority of the TVS programme archive as much of the original production paperwork and sales documentation has been lost during the intervening years. According to Kaleidoscope's TV Brain website, nine episodes of the series no longer exist in broadcast quality, although all but one of these is available on YouTube.

Reception

In a 2023 reflection about CITV, The Guardians Stuart Heritage said lead character Stanley Baxter was "at his most charming". He wrote, "Think Bewitched, but about an old man who could waggle his hair instead of a housewife who could scrunch up her nose and you're there."

Stage production

A musical stage production of Mr Majeika was performed at the Shaw Theatre in 1993. In addition to writing and scoring the musical, Humphrey Carpenter was its co-director. The show featured 60 actors aged five to 18 and an orchestra with 20 performers. The Mushy Pea Theatre Company put on the show, which was staffed by volunteers.