Fungus the Bogeyman resurfaces for Sky1 adaptation

Fungus the Bogeyman as featured on the cover of the original Raymond Briggs children’s book. Photograph: /flickr

Fungus the Bogeyman is to be brought to back to life by Sky in a four-part adaptation of the Raymond Briggs children’s book.

The story of the green slime-covered creature who lives underground, coming to the surface to scare humans, will be a mixture of live action and animation. The series will be a centrepiece of Sky1’s Christmas schedule.

Sky’s four-part series will be written by Tom MacRae, creator of Comedy Central’s Threesome, who has also written episodes of Doctor Who.

The book, originally published in 1977, was previously adapted by the BBC in a three-part series in 2004 starring Martin Clunes and Fay Ripley and written by Mark Haddon.

He’s coming to get you! The BBC’s 2004 Fungus the Bogeyman adaptation

Sky1 director Adam MacDonald said he was “beyond excited” by the adaptation, which he said would bring “classic Fungus the Bogeyman squelchingly up-to-date as a top quality, ambitious and joyous family treat for our customers”.

The series will be made by Imaginarium Studios in partnership with visual effects specialist DNeg TV.

A children’s picture book, Fungus the Bogeyman has been described as a “rich, imaginative and complex philosophical work” that creates an “upside down underworld where a gloomy nihilism is the order of the day” with a “definite punky, ‘no future’, Sex Pistols quality”.

Fungus the Bogeyman was commissioned by MacDonald with Sky’s head of drama Anne Mensah and commissioning editor, Cameron Roach.