The Dutch duo Bassie & Adriaan was/is very popular in The Netherlands. The clown 'Bassie' and the acrobat 'Adriaan' made a lot of adventures in the circus and by hunting down the criminals 'De Baron', B2 and 'Vlugge Japie'. In the eighties and nineties, there was an episode on television every day. I remember popular series 'De Verdwenen Kroon' and 'De Plaaggeest' very well! One of their final/latest adventures was filmed when the European borders (or countries in the European Union) were going to be opened in 1993. Bassie & Adriaan travelled through these European countries in 1992 and they had to collect packages in specific places. The first episode was about visiting France and The Netherlands. Publisher CNR licensed these episodes and released their first video CD of Bassie & Adriaan in 1995. For some reason, the other countries that were filmed were never released and this was the only Video CD about their travels through Europe.
Next to that, Bassie & Adriaan also made a series about their 'travelling full of surprises', in Dutch 'De Reis vol Verrassingen'. In these videos, they travelled again through various countries (mostly outside Europe). Publisher CNR also released four episodes of this series on for separate Video CD's. That means also this series was not completed on VCD. Only the episode "Bassie & Adriaan op zoek in Amerika" was never released. Interesting detail is that these versions are the old versions and not the remastered versions, which means the original music is still in here.
Another interesting detail is that the episodes of 'Las Vegas' and 'Het Wilde Westen' are released on a double VCD, so two discs each, while the others were pressed on a single VCD. That's remarkable, as all episodes of Bassie & Adriaan technically have the same length. Is the quality higher (thanks to a newer VCD standard version?) or did they cut away parts so it would fit a single VCD?
The complete list of Bassie & Adriaan Video CD's is as following:
- Bassie en Adriaan Op zoek in Nederland en Frankrijk (1995) CNR 1001 (1-cd)
- Bassie en Adriaan Op zoek in Curaçao (1995) CNR 1004 (1-cd)
- Bassie en Adriaan Op zoek in San Francisco (1995) CNR 1005 (1-cd)
- Bassie en Adriaan Op zoek in het Wilde Westen (1995) CNR 1011 (2-cd)
- Bassie en Adriaan Op zoek in Las Vegas (1995) CNR 1016 (2-cd)
[Thanks, Jeroen Iking, DJKoelkast, Marc Naninck / Retroman]