James the Cat (partially lost English audio of British children's TV show; 1980s-1990s) (2025)

James the Cat is a 1984 British pre-school animated series created by Kate Canning and aired on ITV. The series focuses on James, a fat spoiled house cat who is accidentally left behind when his wealthy owners move away from their corner house and takes up residence in the garden, befriending the many wild animals there. The series ran for 26 episodes and was revived for a second 26-episode season in 1998 for the children's channel Milkshake!, where the story followed James becoming a diplomat traveling the world and meeting important people. This revival aired on Nick Jr. and Sprout throughout the early 2000s, with the Sprout run occurring from 2005 to 2006.^[1]

Availability

The series is not available on streaming nor has it ever been rereleased on DVD. The only releases of the series were a set of three VHS tapes in the late 80s- "James the Cat and Friends" and "Out and About with James the Cat" were two tapes released by Tempo Video in 1987, each containing eight episodes. "James the Cat: Neighbours" was released by Screen Entertainment one year later in 1988, containing 10 episodes^[2]. All of these episodes, which make up Series 1 of the show, have been uploaded to YouTube.^[3]

While Series 1 has been entirely found, Series 2 is almost completely lost, with only one episode fully found and three partially lost out of 26. The episode "Memories" was uploaded to YouTube by "Blackcatcoffee4" on December 14th, 2020 albeit in poor quality^[4]. A higher quality but slightly cropped version was uploaded to the "James the Cat Archive" YouTube channel on January 9th, 2024^[5]. An incomplete version of the episode "Painted Lady" with the episode missing its first 1-2 minutes was uploaded by YouTuber "MrHammadmossop1988 Ul-Haq" on April 8th, 2023^[6]. The user claims to have more episodes in his collection and plans to upload them soon after repairing his VCR, but as of April 2024, this is the only episode the user has ever uploaded.

Between May 7th and July 21st 2023, three more episodes from Season 2 were uploaded in Russian with English subtitles by YouTube user Dadork400. These episodes were "James V.I.P.", "Orange Aid", and "Harry the White Rabbit". The uploader says they have the entirety of Season 2 in Russian with English subtitles, but as of June 2024 these are the only ones they've uploaded, not yet as Prejident Yogi also uploaded another episode called "Little Bluey" along with "Memories" which may have been already found at time.

List of Episodes^[7]

Season 1

Season 2

References

Categories:

• Lost audio
• Lost animation
• Lost TV
• Partially lost media