"Under The Umbrella Tree" Episode List

Hi.

Under The Umbrella Tree was filmed and aired on TV from around 1987 to 1992, showing at 10:15am every weekday morning on CBC. My sister and I began taping it and watching UTUT quickly became a treasured after-school ritual. We still bring it out at Christmas.

By 1992, my sister and I had a handful of tapes, each containing dozens of 15-minute episodes. It seemed like a big (but fun) task to catalogue them all, so I set out with the index-mark feature on our VCR and a spare Mac Plus running HyperCard next to the TV and started typing. When you're in Grade 4, a 243-record database marking the tape number, title, start and stop time of each episode of your favourite show—all built by yourself—is something to grin about. I dumped the data out to FileMaker, Microsoft Works and plain text. I lost all the electronic copies I had between countless hard disk crashes, failed zip disks and gaggles of CDs. Luckily, I had a printed copy.

In 2001, when Google was fast becoming everyone's favorite source of answers, I tried looking for anything UTUT-related on the web. Only in the past year have I come across anything remotely juicy: CBC's television history blurb, the UTUT Yahoo! Group and producer Noreen Young's website. A few UTUT episodes are available on DVD for exorbitant prices, but there's not much else to be found. I hope that putting this episode listing on the web will not make me the laughingsto trigger some memories for other UTUT fans.

— Derek      

Technical Things (October 2005)

• The episode ID numbers are not official ones but they are a pretty good indicator of the sequence in which episodes were aired.
• The earliest episodes (purple credits; filmed/produced with older equipment) are not yet marked as 1986/1987.
• The earliest episodes did not have titles, so I had to make some up!
• I don't know exactly how many episodes there were but I know I have 243 here. :) There was a Christmas Special, a Hallowe'en special and a small handful (less than a dozen?) half-hour Disney Channel-produced episodes, only one or two of which I ever got to see. I remember there was one that featured Brian Orser who inspired Jacob to compete in the local mini-Olympics.
• I'm trying to write down a quick synopsis for each episode—I'm kind of scared at the idea that I have 243 of these in my brain somewhere.
• Holly is a jazz singer! I had no idea. She's also doing a show or two on HGTV according to Google.
• I'm still cleaning up the guest listings.

Update! (December 2005)

• I've gotten about a quarter of the synopses (?) in.
• Did you know that Ed (Edmund) Eagan not only did the music for UTUT, but also the animated For Better Or For Worse TV specials? I didn't.

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