The All-New Popeye Show

THE ALL-NEW POPEYE SHOW
Made by: Hanna-Barbara
Shown on: BBC
Years shown: mid-late 1980s

By the time I watched this, and then saw the repeats approximately a week later, the title of this programme was a lawsuit waiting to happen. Here we had all the usual Popeye/Olive Oyl/Bluto shenanigans, plus a couple of spin-offs, including the pseudo-Bilko/Private Benjamin adventures of Olive Oyl’s stint in the army, Private Olive Oyl. Memorably, there was a squat, screaming, female drill-sergeant, always trying to impress the kindly old major who dropped by every so often; and also Alice, possibly the weirdest, most inexplicable thing to ever be spawned by kids’ TV. What was Alice? She was seven-and-a-half feet tall, spoke her own private garbled language, and appeared to have hairy coconuts attached to her wrists and angles. Was she a military experiment gone awry? A Roswell crash survivor? The missing link? Anyway, ‘she’ and Oyl always triumphed, mostly inadvertently, over their sergeant, and won the approval of the major. If you thought this was bad, it was nothing compared to the later Popeye and Son (Hanna-Barbara, 1987), which featured Popeye’s blond, all-American teenage son, who possessed the same spinach-induced powers as his old dad (but not his ugly mug, of course). Bluto’s fat, bullyboy offspring also appeared as the antagonist, as well as the usual round of cutesy girls and a best friend with a big quiff. This was the kind of show you’d swear you wouldn’t watch the next time it was on, as it was only mildly better than maths homework.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 3/10

Alias the Jester

ALIAS THE JESTER
Made by: Cosgrove Hall
Shown on: ITV
Year shown: 1986
Theme tune: "Alias the Jester was a time-traveller bold/By pure bad luck his ship got caught in the earth's magnetic hold..." (doesn't sound like it scans very well, but kids aren't fussy about that sort of thing.)

Smack bang in the middle of Children’s ITV’s mid-80s slump, which mainly consisted of rubbish sketch shows (Your Mother Wouldn’t Like It and Stop That Laughing at the Back) and cheap American cartoons, came this offering from the makers of Dangermouse. Richard Briers provided the voice of Alias, an intergalactic tourist who crash-lands his spacecraft in medieval England, in a place called Houghton Bottoms. He is befriended by Meredith the Magician, who persuades Alias to become the court jester to the diminutive King Arthur and his queen, Edith. The series began life as a short animated film which won a BAFTA in 1986, and was entertaining enough to the undiscerning child, but try as it might, Alias could never come close to the witty adventures of DM and the trusty Penfold. Still, there was a sinister character called The Black Najjer, and I think that deserves a mention.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 5/10

(Thanks to 'Cosgrove Hall Ate My Brain' for the borrowed pic)