Britt Allcroft, the British producer, director and writer who adapted the antics of the cheerful, timid locomotive into the TV series “Thomas & Friends,” which became an all-encompassing franchise and a longtime favorite of children and adults, died Dec. 25. in Los Angeles. She was 81 years old.
Her death was confirmed by her daughter Holly Wright.
Mrs Allcroft was the driving force behind the creation of Thomas the Tank Engine, an animated locomotive first conceived in a series of children’s books in the 1940s by Reverend Wilbert Awdryon television screens. The series spawned a movie, merchandise, and even theme parks, growing into a billion-dollar franchise.
Its original adaptation was a low-budget live-action production that premiered in 1984 on the UK channel ITV as “Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends”, later shortened to “Thomas & Friends”. Audiences were quickly drawn to the series’ life lessons filled with catchy music, lush landscapes and a fun ensemble of human-like locomotives. It became a runaway success that aired for more than three decades in the United Kingdom, the United States and elsewhere.
“Children today live in a fast-paced world, but I don’t think children are really changing,” Ms Allcroft said in a 1995 BBC documentary. “In life, they need tenderness, comfort. They need entertainment and they need stories that, while entertaining, help them interpret the world.”
Ms. Allcroft first came across the series while researching a documentary about railroads. Earlier attempts to adapt the books for TV had failed, but she pushed for the rights, envisioning a series with a narrator close to the original books.
Her conviction led her to finance much of it herself, even mortgaging her house, she said in Interview from 1995 with the Australian “60 Minutes”.
As for the narrator, Ms. Allcroft looked for the right voice when she heard it on television: “I walked into the room and Ringo Starr was being interviewed on a chat show,” she said.
The former Beatles member became the first in a long line of stars to narrate the franchise, including Michael Angelis, George Carlin, Alec Baldwin and Pierce Brosnan.
“This was a woman who pioneered the TV industry in the early ’80s, and it was largely dominated by men,” said Brannon Carty, director of “An Unlikely Fandom,” a 2023 documentary about the show’s enduring appeal. “She had all these things going against her that would make the average person give up,” he said. “Despite all that, she took the lead.”
The series found its way to American children in 1989, when Ms. Allcroft took it to PBS in the form of spinoff series“Shining Time Station,” which included clips from the UK version of the show.
“She was a very good businesswoman,” said Rick Siggelkow, a television producer who worked with Ms. Allcroft. “She had a vision and she had this intuitive understanding of children. She would just rake forward.”
Some executives were initially skeptical that the series would be successful, Mr. Siggelkow, but Ms. Allcroft believed that children would be drawn to a slower-paced story that had the intimacy of a bedtime story.
“Thomas had a gentleness that was really very different from everything else that was on the air,” he said in an interview.
“The Great Weather Station” became a hit among American children, winning an estimated 1.2 million viewers on PBS – competing with “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood,” according to for The New York Times in 1991. The series was also broadcast internationally, fueling global commercial demand for merchandise ranging from toys and train sets to posters and puzzles.
“Thomas & Friends” is now one of the world’s the biggest toy and preschool television franchises, with analysts evaluating annual global retail sales of more than $1 billion in 2016. Mattel acquired Hit Entertainment, the British owner of Thomas, in 2012 in a $680 million deal.
After some criticism that the characters in the series lack diversity, recent adaptations off The world of Thomas, both on screen and in merchandise, has added locomotives from Brazil, China, India and Mexico.
The franchise made it to the big screen with the 2000 film Thomas and the Magic Railroad. A separate, animated version of the series, “Thomas and Friends: All Engines Go,” aired on Cartoon Network in 2021. A second movie is in the works, according to Mattel.
Britt Allcroft was born on December 14, 1943 in West Sussex, England, before moving to London.
When she was 16, she became interested in the local theater and the work that went on behind the scenes. Ms Allcroft joined the BBC when she was 19, appearing in shows including “Blue Peter”, whose production team she later moved to.
In the early 1970s she moved to Southern Television and later founded her own company, Britt Allcroft Productions, through which she created television and theater productions working for local television stations.
At the end of the decade, she was hired to make a short documentary about British steam trains and recalled books from her youth.
She was married to Angus Wright, a television producer who worked closely with her in developing “Thomas & Friends” for film. They divorced in 1997.
In addition to her daughter, she is survived by her son and grandchildren.
The longevity of the series, which spans generations, has made it a nostalgic favorite of adults as well. In recent years, online communities have sprung up that celebrate the series and even create their own exemplary versions of favorite episodes.
When Ms. Allcroft attended a screening of the 2023 documentary, “people were cheering and screaming” for her, said Mr. Carty, the director. “It was like the Super Bowl when she came out.”
Ultimately, Ms. Allcroft said in the documentary, she wanted her world to be an escape.
“I wanted to make it so that every little child watching can feel that it is a place where they can go,” she said. “That they were not alone, that they were comforted and that they were inspired.”
Emmett Lindner contributed reporting.
