Pat a Mat is a Czech stop motion animation series from the late 70s. Two neighbours with the unfailing ability to botch every DIY project they take on, work themselves clumsily into a mess in each episode. Every time they think they’ve fixed things they loudly say “A je to!”, That’s it! in Czech. The Dutch spoken version has not translated that key phrase. Y finds the series very funny. After making a wooden puzzle the right way first, Y said “now let’s do it Pat a Mat style!” with the result below. When she was done she shouted “A je to!” and erupted into laughter.

4 reactions on “

  1. I never would have thought that this fairy tale was popular outside of the Eastern Bloc. In Poland it was called “Neighbors”. It was popular and liked.

    • The Dutch title is “buurman en buurman”, “neighbour and neighbour’, so similar to the Polish title. It is still being broadcast, and available on Netflix. I watched as a kid as well, and now our 4 yr old does too.

  2. So cool to hear that one of my two favourite cartoons is also popular abroad. The other one is Krteček (the little mole) which uses maybe 4 or 5 Czech words in total .

Comments are closed.