Pat and Mat turn 50: Czechia’s clumsy handymen take DIY chaos worldwide

If these two stop-motion puppet characters get their hands on something, you can be pretty sure it will go wrong. Pat and Mat, Czechia’s famously clumsy handymen, have been entertaining audiences for five decades, and their slapstick adventures have won fans around the world.

Pat and Mat|Photo: Czech Television

In one typical episode, Pat and Mat decide to hang a large picture. But first, they have to get it through the apartment door. What follows is a familiar combination of hammering, sawing, drilling and climbing ladders, as they struggle to get the picture in place, only to end up destroying it in the process.

Pat is the shorter one, in a yellow sweater and beret, while the taller Mat wears a red jumper and a knitted hat with a pom-pom. Together with their distinctive look and Petr Skoumal’s instantly recognisable theme tune, they have become some of the best-known characters in Czech animation.

They first appeared on August 12, 1976, in a short puppet film called Kuťáci, or The Handymen. The film was directed by Lubomír Beneš, who created the characters together with illustrator and cartoonist Vladimír Jiránek.

Although Pat and Mat never say a word, Jiránek said he imagined them having conversations, as he explained in a 1993 Czech Television documentary:

“When I scold them, a dialogue begins. But of course, someone who isn’t part of the creative process can’t hear that dialogue. Then they answer me, and we eventually reach a compromise that works for both sides.”

Pat and Mat|Photo: Czech Television

The inspiration for the characters included Beneš’s earlier cartoons about DIY enthusiasts. Kuťáci proved popular with audiences, and three years later Pat and Mat got their own television series, A je to!, or And That’s It! .

The series was made during the period of communist Normalization, and production was taken over by the Bratislava studio of Czechoslovak Television. One reason was reportedly to put the project further away from the censors in Prague.

But even this did not mean the series completely escaped censorship. One of the handymen temporarily lost his trademark red sweater because the censors considered the deliberately chosen colour to be making fun of people in communist countries.

At first, the two handymen had no names. They became Pat and Mat in 1989, partly because names made the series easier to sell abroad. They went on to become popular far beyond Czechoslovakia, from Germany, Austria and Poland to Brazil and Iran.

Their names have also changed from country to country. In the Netherlands, for instance, they are Buurman en Buurman, or Neighbour and Neighbour.

Pat and Mat|Photo: Czech Television

Marek Beneš, the son of Lubomír Beneš, later followed his father into filmmaking and has continued the Pat and Mat tradition. In an interview with Czech Radio ten years ago, he recalled just how far the characters had travelled:

“The names Pat and Mat have even entered the Persian language as a term for clumsiness. So people say that someone is like Pat and Mat. They are more popular there than the Czech Republic itself.”

'Pat and Mat: Back in the Countryside'|Photo: Bioscop

Today, modern technology, including 3D printing, is used to make new episodes. But the basic formula remains much the same: two optimistic handymen, a seemingly simple job and an increasingly chaotic attempt to get it done.

A new feature film, Pat a Mat: Zpátky na venkově, or Pat and Mat: Back in the Countryside, will be released in Czech cinemas on October 8. It is the fifth feature film made by Marek Beneš about the two famously accident-prone handymen.