TV series about alchemist from the Middle Ages traveling 500 years into the future to find a powerful, ancient machine

Question

Alchemist travels in time from Middle Ages to the present day, using a magic portal. He meets with a boy, who is living with his parents in a huge old house, that dates back to the Middle Ages. Alchemist is searching for 12 pieces to an ancient compass or device that would point him to the treasure. Treasure is some machine, that makes people fly like birds. The alchemist tells the boy that the machine comes from old times from "before his times".

I remember only two phrases.

#1. Boy asks him where the machine comes from and he says "it was built by a Great Wise man, many generations ago when a Great Sea Empire ruled all of Earth. They warred with another Empire. After the last war, they set off in ships that sailed across Black Sky. And their great city sunk into the ocean."

So, references to Atlantis. After the war, they boarded spaceships and left Earth across Black Sky (Space) and their city disappeared in the sea.

The alchemist was thinking that if find all 12 pieces of the puzzle, a compass would show where the last Atlantian Wiseman/Priest have hidden his machine. So, the boy makes deal with him that the alchemist gets the machine and he gets any gold or treasure that is found with the machine. I don't remember exactly, but I think the boy's parents were having a financial crisis and were on verge of losing their old house due to debts or unpaid bills.

#2. Alchemist finds a hand grenade and thinks it is a piece of his puzzle. He runs about with it thinking about how to activate it. He goes on a golf course, pulls the ring from the grenade, and drops it on the ground. A guy that was playing golf knocks it away just before it explodes. The guy is told, "That was your best shot to date."

I missed many episodes and saw only its end. They find a compass and the treasure, but there was no machine, only gold. So, the boy buys the alchemist a hot air balloon. The last shot was of the alchemist flying in the balloon over the countryside.

If I remember right, Alchemist's name was Grendfield or Klendfield TV Series could be French or British. Not American, but I am not sure.

I watched it maybe in 1991-1995. It was running on Channel 1. Russian state channel. All foreign TV & Movies were fitted with Russian audio. The original audio was always deleted. It was always a synchronous voice-over. Credits also were always deleted. Start and end credits. This was rated as a children's series.

Answer 1

That's a British show from 1970 called Catweazle.

The premise in the first episode is that an 11th century bumbling wizard, named Catweazle (Geoffrey Bayldon) is pursued by soldiers through a wood, carrying only his magic charm and his toad familiar (a familiar is a supernatural entity). He says a spell as he jumps into a pond. When he comes out he thinks he has made the wood and soldiers disappear, but in fact has jumped 900 years into the future.

He arrives on a farm in rural England in the year 1969 and befriends the farmer's son, a red-headed teenager, Edward Bennet, nicknamed Carrot (Robin Davies), who spends most of the rest of the series attempting to hide Catweazle from his father (Bud Tingwell) and the farmhand Sam (Neil McCarthy). Catweazle searches for a way to return to his own time while hiding out in a disused water tower on abandoned Ministry of Defence land, which he calls Castle Saburac, with his familiar, a toad called Touchwood (a pun on touchstone). Luckily, whenever he is spotted, he uses his magic amulet to hypnotise people into forgetting that they saw him.

The second series featured a 12-part riddle that Catweazle, now in 1970, attempts to solve at the rate of one clue an episode, the solution (as he thinks) being revealed in the 13th.

Here's the magic portal that brings him into the future. (Actully, a pond)

Here's the bit with the hand grenade

And the balloon: