Look and Read

LOOK AND READ
Made by: BBC?
Shown on: BBC
Years shown: 1967 - present

On a Tuesday morning, we would file upstairs to the television room, where it was dark and smelt of feet, and the techno-phobic teacher would spend ten minutes letting the TV ‘warm up’. Then we’d tune into BBC2 and would watch that clock with the disappearing seconds, while we waited for Look and Read to begin…I wouldn’t exactly say with excitement.

Look and Read was presented by the terminally-annoying Wordy (see picture), a floating orange being with the fridge-magnet letters of the alphabet stuck to him, whose sole ambition in life was to help under-eights with their literacy skills. He lived in a space lab orbiting earth, and was kept company by Colin, his tracksuit-donning human assistant, who had presumably been banished from earth for crimes against English lessons.

There were plenty of infuriatingly catchy songs, mostly by Derek Griffiths, and cartoons to help you remember your grammar. The Magic E song (long before any drug-connotations) went something like, “Tim is on time with me”, and was showing you the effects of adding an ‘e’ to the end of words. There was also, “Think big, big big at the beginning…and at the end of the sentence FULL STOP!”, demonstrating when to use capital letters and full stops, no less. The past-tense was also a preoccupation for Look and Read, and there was a cartoon construction worker, who encouraged you to “build yourself a word with ‘ed’, to say it happen-ED”; and I must make mention of the strange Dog Detective, who was always chasing ‘th’ for some reason.

There was a cartoon about a character called Rip van Twinkle, but the bit everyone was waiting for was the serialised mini-drama, which was also an exercise in learning new words and their contexts, but that was all secondary, really. These are just a few that they churned out during the eighties:

Dark Towers, 1981

Written by television writer supremo, Andrew Davies, Dark Towers starred Christopher Biggins and Denise Coffey, and was supposed to be a comedy, but I actually found it quite scary. It involved the ghoulish Tall Knight, and a load of ghosts trying to stop the mansion they haunt from being sold, by spooking the prospective buyers.

Fairground, 1983

“Fair’s fair in the fairground” sang Derek Griffiths in the title song, but Ossie thought something was not quite right about his mum’s friend, the fairground owner. As was always the case in these things, the kid was chided for spreading malicious rumours, but was vindicated in the end and had to be apologised to.

Badger Girl, 1984

Also written by Andrew Davies, this was set in Dartmoor, where a group of kids were at some kind of outward-bounds centre. The girl of the title was so-called because of the stripe of dye she wore in her hair, and she was accompanied by a pair of hapless lads, while they tried to convince the grown-ups that someone was running a pony-rustling scam. Or something. Anyway, the RSPCA got involved and all was right with the world.

Geordie Racer, 1985

Being cheeky northerners ourselves, this was the one my class particularly liked, as it featured a lot of locations we recognised, including the very local St Mary’s Lighthouse. Unfortunately, the stereotypes were out in force: the hero was Spuggie, who was a podgy pigeon-fancier for a start. There was something to do with stealing prize-pigeons - or maybe it was antiques - but the finale, when the crooks were caught in the act, took place at Delaval Hall, a stately home near where I lived at the time. What a thrill.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 4/10

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