Jackanory

JACKANORY
Made by: BBC
Shown on: BBC
Years shown: 1965-96

If you ask most parents who had young children while Jackanory was running - and let’s face it, there are literally generations of them - you will rarely find a critical comment. Jackanory was the kind of programme they felt perfectly safe about leaving their children with; it was educational, featured lots of wholesome, high quality personalities from different spheres of show business, made them feel good about themselves, and it also saved them the job of reading their children an afternoon story.

But let’s face it, Jackanory was dull. Deathly dull. Usually, I had just spent the best part of the day sitting quietly on the mat while a teacher read to me from The Iron Man or Fantastic Mr Fox, and I was also lucky enough to have two parents who read me lots of stories, so I had reached saturation point by 4.30pm. As you may have gathered, Jackanory was simply a lone celebrity reading from a children’s book, usually serialised over five days, and with no gimmicks or extras. It was the perfect showcase for actors who were looking for a bit of low-effort exposure, and there would be absolutely nothing or nobody to upstage them. They were falling over themselves to be featured; stars such as Rik Mayall, Floella Benjamin, Willie Rushton, Dame Judi Dench, Michael Palin, Bernard Cribbins and Kathy Burke. In 1984, Prince Charles turned story-teller, reading his own book, The Old Man of Lochnagar, while dressed in a kilt, on a wild, windy mountainside (all lesser mortals were studio-bound.)

I for one was not impressed, and was surprised that the camera and sound men didn’t fall asleep themselves. I’m all for reading, especially with children, and Jackanory was a worthy idea, but it was hijacked by publicity-hungry celebrities (especially those who couldn’t actually be at home to read to their kids) and suffered from far too much Roald Dahl in latter years.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 3/10

(Thanks to www.televisionheaven.co.uk for the borrowed pic)