Tales of the Riverbank

Tales of the Riverbank, sometimes called Hammy Hamster and later called Once Upon a Hamster, was a British children's television show developed from a Canadian pilot. The original series was later broadcast on Canadian and U.S. television, dubbed by Canadian and American actors for the markets they were to be broadcast in.

The pilot was created by David Ellison and Paul Sutherland, CBC film editors, in 1959. After completing the pilot programme, CBC turned down the production and so Dave Ellison travelled to the BBC in London to show it. The BBC initially commissioned thirteen episodes, but extended this later. A second series were made in colour in the 1970s, narrated by Johnny Morris.

The show also aired on the Animal Planet during the late 1990s and early 2000s.

A later remake was produced by YTV and Channel 4 in 1995 which ran for three years, and a feature-length film was made in 2008 using puppets rather than live animals.