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Dog, The Drifter



Apparently, they already made a tv show about me:


This amazes me infinitely. I was destined to find this and rip it off!


I didn’t think any of this was real at first, but there’s at least a Wikipedia entry about it:

All three productions centered around a stray German shepherd who wanders from town to town, helping people in need. In the movie, the dog was tethered to a lamb for most of the story. Although the concept was similar to that of Lassie, the Littlest Hobo did not have an owner, and despite the attempts of many people to adopt him, he preferred to be on his own, and would head off by himself at the end of each episode. Never actually named on-screen, the dog is therefore often referred to by the name Hobo (though he was often given names by his multitudes of temporary owners). Although there were recurring actors in the both series, the only constant was the dog.

The lyrics for the various versions of the theme songs are here. I think the one in the video above is by Terry Bush.







5 Reader Responses

  1. Dan Bartlett Says:
    April 29th, 2008 at 2:10 am

    I used to watch this when I was a kid, most British kids remember the AWESOME theme tune. After 10 or so years of forgetting it I found myself humming the theme some time last year and then hunted down the video online, much to my delight.

  2. cheeba Says:
    May 1st, 2008 at 3:40 pm

    Yeah, what? How could you not know about this? Dan’s younger than you and he remembers! Is this another one of those things where British kids only got US TV imports ten years after they were made, so that all of my childhood TV memories come from the 1970s? It’s all The ADventures of huckleberyy Finn and The Red Hand Gang round here, mate…

    [see also: benji, zax and the alien prince…]

    Actually it’s probably more to do with the fact that we only had 4 domestic TV channels growing up so everyone watched the same things and childhood TV is now the only universal shared cultural experience for the 18-30 bracket. But I guarantee you, walk into any pub in England and sing ‘maybe tomorrow..’ at someone over 25 and they will join in with ‘i’ll wanna settle down’. Either that or, you know, glass you or something. Ahhh… alcohol abuse. There’s one grand tradition in no danger of dying out…

  3. Big Elk Says:
    May 1st, 2008 at 5:50 pm

    It’s a Canadian show, which explains why we didn’t get it in the US.

  4. cheeba Says:
    May 2nd, 2008 at 7:57 am

    Makes sense. I probably didn’t really know the difference back then. Does this mean you were also denied the glories of ‘Degrassi Junior High’?

    Sorry, I could go off on a massive nostalgia binge right now. I just tried showing an episode of ‘Mr Benn’ [Dan knows…] to a bunch of American college students and convincing them of the genius and subtlety of the subtextual critique of industrial capitalism. I would have done ‘Bagpuss’ but you can only push them so far…

  5. dan Says:
    May 2nd, 2008 at 10:02 am

    very funny. I know the show and the tune for sure, couldn’t miss it round these parts. In fact, my band did an original song called “Littlest Hobo” based on this,
    way back. You can find it on the list of songs here for a listen:

    http://www.reverbnation.com/howlingmindglide

    Whenever we play that song live, we introduce it with the TV theme show tune sing along - There’s a voice, keeps on calling me…down the road, that’s where I’ll always be, and every stop I make…Then BANG with our heavy littlest hobo song :)
    The sing along is always very popular.



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