No, this isn’t an April Fool’s gag very early – you read that right. William Shatner, Captain Kirk himself, is to be the voice of the Clangers for the new Smallfilms series coming this year.

You might have thought that American audiences would have been able to cope with Monty Python’s Michael Palin, who is still the British narrator, but clearly Sprout, the network airing the series in the States thought otherwise. “When we began working on Clangers, we knew that we needed to find a narrator for the show who could connect with multiple generations of parents and kids,” Sprout President Sandy Wax said in a statement. “William Shatner’s highly recognizable voice and humor captures the distinct charm of the show while bringing his own unique sensibility to the role of the Narrator.”

In the US, the series of new adventures about the small creatures is scheduled to premiere during Sprout’s Sunny Side Up Show programming block at 11a.m. on June 20 and will also run nightly at 8 p.m. within The Good Night Show.