Square Eyes: Kids' TV of the 80s/90s

Switch off the TV set and do something less boring instead...

2006-07-15T13:14:00.000Z

It's with some sadness that I reach the end of this blog. There are probably plenty of children's TV shows that I haven't covered, but I've reached the end of the alphabet and it's time to do something new. If you've been reading this blog over the past few months I hope you've enjoyed it as much as I've enjoyed the reminiscing - I apologise if I've awakened anyone's childhood traumas...! Please have a look at my other blogs, which are equally vitriolic and hopefully amusing - there will be more coming soon!

Your Mother Wouldn't Like It

2006-07-15T13:09:00.000Z

YOUR MOTHER WOULDN'T LIKE IT
Made by: Central Television
Shown on: ITV
Years shown: 1985-88

Well, the makers of this manic, slightly vulgar kids’ show were right about one thing: my mother didn’t like it. In fact, it was when she saw a sketch very similar to that of Mr Creosote in Monty Python's Meaning of Life, about a boy stuffing his face with fast-food, that she forbade me from watching it. Your Mother Wouldn’t Like It! was a more extreme version of Stop That Laughing at the Back, which it ran alongside for a while; it was a sketch-show where the humour and entire mentality was very anti-parents and anti-authority. Aren’t we clever and innovative?, they thought. And actually, they were right to some extent, because the show nabbed itself a BAFTA for Best Children’s Entertainment Programme. Your Mother Wouldn’t Like It was comprised of a sequence of often serialised sketches, including the escapades of Lonnie (Paul Stark) and Loaf (Ian Kirkby), the Sue Townsend-penned The Wimp (played by Simon Schatzenberger), and the real big-hitter, Palace Hill. Palace Hill was a Grange Hill spoof, with mock Prince Charles and Prince William characters in starring roles, complete with the big, sticking-out ears, of course. It was deeply unfunny, but managed to secure its own spin-off programme, which ran for a few series in the mid-eighties CITV wasteland.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 2/10

You Should Be So Lucky!

2006-07-15T13:01:00.000Z

YOU SHOULD BE SO LUCKY!
Made by: ?
Shown on: BBC1
Years shown: circa 1986

Theme tune: "You should be so/You should be so/You should be so lucky!"

What were the inventors of this game show thinking? I can’t even begin to give a comparison. You Should Be So Lucky! was a quiz which involved a snakes and ladders board, an assortment of traditional fairground stalls (hook-a-duck, coconut shy), and a dreadful, white-toothed, faux-American host called Vince Purity (played by Colin Bennett.) He was assisted by four stage-school kids, who were equally deserving of a firing squad; the three girls and one boy dressed in twee Edwardian costumes, and sometimes went by the names April, May, June and…Alexander (the latter’s non-conformity was thought to be hilarious.) The competing children, most of whom were also stage-school material, would take part in a number of different games, which were arbitrarily judged by an audience clap-o-meter. There were also the dreaded 'talent turns', where the contestants partook in various variety show-style antics....ugh, my skin is crawling. I was mildly diverted by this when I was seven, but hopefully I’d be more discerning these days.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 3/10

You and Me

2006-07-14T11:47:00.000Z

YOU AND ME
Made by: ?
Shown on: BBC
Years shown: 1970s-1980s
Theme tune: “You and me, me and you, lots and lots for us to do/Lots and lots for us to see…”

Far inferior to Words & Pictures, You and Me had done itself a disfavour after only two minutes into the show, thanks to the infuriating ‘hello’ sequence, where the presenters greeted absolutely everybody who could conceivably be watching: boys, girls, mums and dads (both unemployed of course, judging by the time of day), childminders, grannies, granddads, uncles, aunts, the neighbour’s cat, the man who sells dishcloths door to door - you get the picture. The programme was supposed to be educational, but I can mainly remember it for Cosmo and Dibs, the two puppet creatures who sat behind a wall in what looked like a rubbish dump or the communal area of a run-down inner-city council estate. They had the collective intelligence of an amoeba, but their learning process was supposed to enable us at home to extend our knowledge. Strangely, the only other strong memory is of an animated kangaroo, who would bound off at the end of the programme, with someone adding, “toodle-oo from the kangaroo!” I’m still waiting for the educational benefits to kick in. Even more bizarrely, Oasis ripped off the You and Me theme lyrics in their song She’s Electric, from the What’s the Story, Morning Glory album. Talk about desperate.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 3/10

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

Words and Pictures

2006-07-14T11:37:00.000Z

WORDS AND PICTURES
Made by: BBC
Shown on: BBC
Years shown: late '70s-early '80s

In its original and best format, Words & Pictures, a programme for pre-schoolers, was set in a public library, and presented by the slightly prim Vicki Ireland. She was the librarian, and was plagued by a floating cartoon-being named Charlie, who had an unquenchable thirst for learning letters, numbers and all kinds of other things that infants are supposed to learn. Every so often, a line of very well-behaved children would file into the library and do some activities, which would inevitably involve Charlie ending up covered in Bostik or glitter. There would be an animation of a well-known story, and then it would be time for the Magic Pencil, which mesmerised children up and down the country. The Magic Pencil had a light on the end of it, and would write without aid on a black background; it taught you how to write different letters, and reminded you that it was “top to bottom, up and over.” Afterwards, there would be another story, which heavily featured the letter you had just learnt, which would appear highlighted. I could have watched an entire show devoted entirely to the Magic Pencil.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 5/10

Woof!

2006-07-14T11:22:00.000Z

WOOF!
Made by: ?
Shown on: ITV
Years shown: 1989-95

This long-running children’s comedy-drama was based on a book by Allan Ahlberg, and concerned an ordinary schoolboy called Eric Banks, who had an extraordinary gift and encumbrance. Without warning, Eric (played by the aptly-named Edward Fidoe) would start itching and would shortly after turn into a dog, abandoning his clothes wherever it happened. There was no apparent reason for this. His parents (John Bowler and Elizabeth Mickery) had no idea about their son’s double life, and the only person who was in the know was his best friend, Roy Ackerman (Thomas Aldwinckle.) Together, they had to keep the secret from everyone, becoming increasingly inventive in their lying; although they often raised the suspicions of their teacher Mrs Jessop (Liza Goddard.) Otherwise, they were normal kids, and had their own garden hide-out, where they communicated by Morse code and could tell when there were any adults approaching.

The dog who played Eric in his canine form was actually female, and had already found fame as the dog who could apparently say ‘sausages’. When Roy and his family moved away, Eric was only alone briefly, before making friends with the new girl at school, Rachel Hobbs (Sarah Smart), with whom he shared his secret. And just as suddenly as his ‘ability’ came on, it disappeared when he was about 15, and began to have more than just a friendship with Rachel. Puppy love - it’ll never last, of course. Woof! was, like all of Ahlberg’s works, charming and very in tune with children’s interests and thinking; Edward Fidoe was a sympathetic and cheeky lead, and even Liza Give Us a Clue Goddard was quite realistic as the kindly teacher.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 8/10

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

The Wombles

2006-07-13T09:50:00.000Z

THE WOMBLES
Made by: Filmfair
Shown on: BBC
Years shown: 1973-75 (original series), plus repeats

Theme tune: “Underground, over-ground, wombling free/The Wombles of Wimbledon Common are we/Making good use of the things that we find/Things that the everyday folk leave behind.”

With scripts by Elizabeth Beresford, and narration by Bernard Cribbins, The Wombles is quite rightly won of the most beloved of British television programmes. They were a group of furry creatures who lived on Wimbledon Common, and collected and recycled litter that the park-users discarded. Fortunately for the government, their popularity coincided with a national Keep Britain Tidy campaign.

The patriarch of the operation was Great Uncle Bulgaria, who had named each of the young ones after an obscure place on his world map: Tobermory (in the Scottish isles), Orinoco (an Amazonian river), Wellington (a city in New Zealand), Bungo (Bungo-Suido is a strait in Japan), and Tomsk (in the former USSR.) Madame Cholet (named after a town in France) was the resident mother-figure, and doled out the chores to everyone, while she got on with the housework. Tobermory was the handyman, Tomsk was the greedy food-obsessive, Wellington was the clever one and wore glasses to prove it, Bungo was an idiot, and Orinoco was an even bigger idiot. Lots of children could identify with Orinoco because he always tried to bunk off his work, and was a eternal scruff-bucket.

The Wombles were sweet without being sickly, there was enough in it for adults to be kept amused for its duration, and the theme was great - except that I thought that the lyrics implied that the Wombles were from Wimbledon and they were common, not that they were from Wimbledon Common. In 1974, The Wombles’ were hijacked by writer and producer Mike Batt, and went on to have a number of hit records, the most recent in December 2000. Remember-member-member what a Womble Womble Womble you are….

SQUARE EYES RATING: 8/10

(Thanks to www.scuzz.com for the borrowed pic)

Wizbit

2006-07-13T09:36:00.000Z

WIZBIT
Made by: ?
Shown on: BBC
Years shown: 1986-7
Theme tune: “Ha ha, this-a-way/Ha ha, that-a-way/Ha ha this-a-way/My oh my!”

The names Paul Daniels and Debbie McGee usually strike horror into the hearts of all patriotic Brits. The famous, short-statured magician should never have been let anywhere near children’s television, but the fact remains that he was, and this was what he came up with (Debbie was responsible for that oh so striking theme song.)

Each episode was 'introduced' by Daniels from his dressing room at Paul's Playhouse (possibly the only place that would give him work these days); he'd do a few tricks and tell the viewers a story about Wizbit.

Wizbit was a yellow, conical shaped magician who came from WOW (World of Wizards, or world of anything else you can think of that begins with ‘w’), but now lived in Puzzleopolous. He was friends with a giant rabbit called Woollie, and lived near Squidgy Bog, a purple jive-talking bog who I used to be quite wary of. Wizbit’s enemy was Professor Doom, who lived in a giant fist in the sky (?!) with his cat, Jinx; and if he wasn’t braving his wrath, he was being challenged to solve riddles by the stingy, jobsworth gate-keeper at Puzzle Gate. Puzzleopolous was not somewhere to be recommended as a holiday resort: aside from the uninviting bog, the locals were seriously weird; there were supposed comedians, Spoof and Bluff (who looked like Marcel Marceau and Oliver Hardy), melancholy clown Pierre-oh, Grocer Green, and Madame Martinka, the town’s resident Mystic Meg. Run for the hills.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 3/10

Wiz

2006-07-13T09:31:00.000Z

WIZ
Made by: BBC?
Shown on: BBC1
Years shown: 1984

Scottish presenter, Kate Copstick, starred as Wiz, a silver robot/alien in this odd and educationally-slanted programme. She lived in an entirely black studio, and was given puzzles to complete by her computer, which you were supposed to care about enough to join in with at home. There was also a dire rap, called ‘Do the Biz with Wiz’. I remember thinking Wiz was a bit dull, but what put me off it for good was that, when watching it, I accidentally switched the TV volume to maximum, which scared me silly, and I forever associated Wiz with this nasty incident of my childhood.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 1/10

Willo the Wisp

2006-07-12T13:18:00.000Z

WILLO THE WISP
Made by: Nicholas Spargo
Shown on: BBC
Years shown: 1980-82

Drugs are bad, kids. And they’re expensive. But a viable alternative is a marathon viewing of Willo the Wisp, an absurd and incomprehensible cartoon about the characters who inhabit Doily Woods. It was narrated by Willo, a spirit-like entity who looked remarkably like Kenneth Williams, possibly because he provided the voices for the characters. The central twosome were Arthur, a big, orange caterpillar, and his friend, Mavis Cruet, a kindly fairy in a tutu, who was just too fat to fulfil her great wish of flying. But if anyone was having any fun, you could guarantee that it wouldn’t last long, because Evil Edna was never far away. Evil Edna was a witch in the form of a TV set; the screen showed her face, and she could zap people with her antennae. The subsidiary characters were Carwash, the posh, monocle-wearing cat, whose wisdom surpassed the combined intelligence of everyone else; and The Moog, a strange, sausage-shaped dog who was affectionate but utterly stupid.

The episodes had to be seen to be believed - pretty much anything could happen, including Evil Edna falling in love with a TV news presenter who she tunes into. That was strange enough, but then, in an attempt to escape, the presenter leapt out of the TV set and revealed himself to be only as big as he appeared on screen. These days, the BBC makes programmes that children can understand, which, in my opinion, is a crying shame.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 6/10

(Thanks to www.sausagenet.com for the borrowed pic)

The Wide-Awake Club

2006-07-12T13:02:00.000Z

THE WIDE-AWAKE CLUB
Made by: TVAM
Shown on: ITV
Years shown: 1985-89

Theme tune: "We're wide awake/It's good to know you're ready and you're wide awake/So on your marks and get set, go/It's Saturday, no school today, so what you gonna do?/There's no excuse to stay in bed we're waiting here for you/Oh, Wide Awake...your start/Here it is...our show/Join now, stay tuned, okay, let's go!/We're Wide Awake!"

The BBC may have had the edge with the post 9am slot, but ITV ruled the airwaves between 7.30 and nine, with this fantastic live entertainment show, presented with verve and enthusiasm, for children with the inability to lie-in. It probably saved a lot of children being strangled by their sleep-deprived parents.

The original presenting line-up saw legendary Tommy Boyd as the natural master of ceremonies; he had presented Magpie with a shocking perm, was a qualified dolphin-trainer and football referee, and mums all over the country thought he was dishy. He was always cool in a crisis, and kept a firm grip on the interviews when his celebrity subjects were getting out of hand. Then there was Arabella Warner, a slightly ‘senior’, blonde woman (very unfair, I’m sure - but she seemed old when I was eight), with big earrings; and James Baker, who just struck me as dull and not intended for children’s TV. Quite the opposite was Timmy Mallett (see WAC-a-Day), who no-one knew what to make of: and, later on in the show’s history, there was the youthful Michaela Strachan, fresh from being the ‘Her’ half of the dreadful late-night music show Hitman and Her, with Pete Waterman. James always seemed to have his arm around Michaela, in a slightly sleazy way.

There were so many features on this fast-paced show, that it’s hard to know where to start. Talent on the Telly was an opportunity for kids to come on and do an unusual party trick, such as turning their eyelids inside out, or putting a tarantula on their tongue. More often though, it was someone impersonating Frank Bruno, or doing a lame magic trick.

Still on the subject of ‘talent’, there was Singing in the Shower (later Bopping in the Bathroom), where children would stand in a fake bathroom setting, with water effects descending on them, while they sang along to Five Star or Mel and Kim.

The Bed-Making Competition was a slot where children would compete against each other to accomplish a tricky task - such as, but hardly ever, making a bed like nurses in a hospital do.

There were a couple of regular guest experts who would come on (which often signalled a good time to go and get your breakfast): Dr Pete doled out medical advice, and Philpott (probably not the name he was christened), who gave you the day’s weather predictions.

Then there was the deeply unfunny Sound Asleep Club, presented by a duo, one of whom was - incredibly enough - a youthful Canadian called Mike Myers. We all have to start somewhere, and at least nobody in his native land saw this.

Tommy took centre stage for Wac Snax, where he donned a chef’s outfit as the French-accented Didier Dodo. This was a jazzed-up cooking section, with recipes sent in by viewers but, famously, Boyd sometimes had to turn his creations down on the grounds that he was a vegetarian. That was his story, anyway.

Food was also the primary ingredient of Silly Senses, where Timmy would blindfold a child and make them taste, touch and smell various things, and then they had to guess what it was. Usually peeled grapes, tinned spaghetti or onions. Michaela and Arabella got revenge on behalf of the tormented children when they forced Timmy to bite into a clove of garlic.

A couple of slots involved viewers calling in on the phone, one of which was the curiously-named Bonk ‘n’ Boob, a quiz where George, the scoreboard, was a blatant rip-off of Dennis the Menace. Hard to picture, I know. There was also Club Call, where kids would send in the name and location of their club or society (either something genuine, like the 24^th Richmond Scout Troop, or something entirely made up, such as the Winky Murder Club), and it would be pinned on a map of Great Britain.

Some sections were entirely kid-free, and were to some degree an attempt to provide a bit of educational stimulation. The WAC Newsreel was like Newsround; Fables, Parables & Miracles explained various myths and legends; and Ghosts, Monsters & Legends was a spooky story told at the wrong end of the day, but the story about the TVAM studio ghost was actually quite frightening. Just when you thought they’d finished bombarding you with information, there was Heroes & Heroines, Villains & Villainesses, and then Hero of the Day, where a viewer would nominate someone or something for having done something heroic - such as an onion preventing a goldfish going down the plughole, or a fence providing a hiding place from a swarm of bees.

Where are the celebrities?, I hear you ask. Well, they were there in force, and the Wide-Awake Club guests really captured the naffness of the eighties: see exhibits such as Nick Kamen, Kim Wilde, Spagna, Mental As Anything, Daley Thompson, Owen Paul, Swing Out Sister and Fine Young Cannibals. They were all subjected to Questions on the Cards, where Tommy would offer them a sheaf of cards, and they had to answer the questions on the cards they selected.

Mustn’t forget the cartoons, of course, which was usually the Go-Bots, a cartoon which was actually ripped off Transformers, if you can believe that. The worst thing about it was that it inspired Timmy to yell, “Go-Bots go botty!” whenever they were about to come on.

An all-time low was hit, however, with the Christmas Song competition, where children were asked to write a festive-themed song and put it to music, the best one being released as a single. The winner also had the dubious privilege of meeting the Duchess of York at the Royal Variety Performance, or something. All the short-listed songs, and the eventual winner, were performed by those spawns of Satan themselves, The Mini-Pops, in their roll-neck jumpers and patterned scarves, surrounded by fake snow and a sleigh. Talk about ruining the spirit of Christmas.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 10/10

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

Why Don't You...?

2006-07-12T12:52:00.000Z

WHY DON'T YOU...?
Made by: BBC?
Shown on: BBC
Years shown: 1973-94

Theme tune: “Why don’t you, why don’t you/Why don’t you, why don’t/Switch off the TV set, and do something less boring instead?/Why don’t you?!”

The theme lyrics said it all, really - it was the mark that of a very bad summer holidays if you were tuning into Why Don’t You? in the mornings. Groups of drama school rejects from around the country, with names such as The Brummie Gang, and The Liverpool Posse, would present this no-adults programme about ideas to keep you from stealing hub caps in your long vacation. There would be ‘makes’ from various pieces of junk that you could find by rummaging in a skip, jokes from random kids off the streets, and some of the most revolting recipes known to man - I particularly recall an annoying whippersnapper, called Brett, making something called ‘Wacky Tacky Pizza’, which was enough to have you confined to your bed for the remainder of the school break. One of Why Don’t You?’s claims to fame - or perhaps its only one - is that it first gave screen time to a twelve year old Anthony McPartlin.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 4/10

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

What's Up, Doc?

2006-07-11T15:44:00.000Z

WHAT'S UP, DOC? Made by: ? Shown on: ITV Years shown: 1992-94

Unsurprisingly, this was a vehicle for Warner Bros cartoons (in the same way that the later Diggit showed Disney cartoons), and was presented by rejects from various other shows - Pat Sharp (the mullet still intact) from Funhouse, Yvette Fielding from Blue Peter, and Andy Crane, most recently from Motormouth. It was very mediocre stuff, although Fielding did her best to hold it together, but it was made a lot worse by the presence of Bro and Bro, two puppet wolves, who supposedly ate children. Oh, if only they ate the head of ITV programming first.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 2/10

We are the Champions

2006-07-11T15:33:00.000Z

WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS
Made by: BBC?
Shown on: BBC1
Years shown: 1973-95

Over half the kids at school hate sports day. It’s invariably cold, likely to be raining, you have to wear the kind of brief clothes you wouldn’t even wear on a tropical holiday, and you are compelled to partake in a variety of gruelling sporting events, most of which you are no good at and have no interest in. Oh, and the teachers all wear track-suits and swig from mugs of warming tea.

So why was We Are The Champions so popular, then? All it was, was a televised sports day, hosted by BBC athletics commentator, Ron Pickering. Basically, teams of children would compete in outdoor relay races, usually involving beanbags, cargo nets, eggs, tennis balls, or all of the above. But the bit that everyone loved, and wished they could take part in, was the swimming pool finale. “Away you go!” Ron would shout, and the kids would plunge into the pool and grapple with numerous floats and inflatables, collect rubber rings, and try to doggy-paddle to victory. Actually, nobody cared who won - they were just waiting for the bit at the end, where everyone (the teams, the supporters; everyone except Ron Pickering, really) bombed into the water, and proceeded to do everything those signs at public swimming baths always expressly tell you not to do.

When Ron Pickering suddenly died, the role of PE teacher was taken over by Gary Lineker, who was obviously waiting for a more serious, meaty sports role with the BBC.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 6/10

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

Wacky Races

2006-07-11T15:25:00.000Z

WACKY RACES
Made by: CBS/Hanna Barbera
Shown on: BBC?
Years shown: 1968 onwards

In my opinion, Wacky Races was the finest creation of this incredibly prolific animation partnership, due to its fantastic inventiveness, and despite the fact that every episode had pretty much the same plot-line. The cartoon was inspired by Blake Edwards’ film, The Great Race (1965), which saw a band of unconventional characters, including Jack Lemmon, Natalie Wood and Tony Curtis, competing in a 1920s car race.

The same characters took part in the Wacky Races every episode - a bit like a rally or Formula 1 circuit - and there was a radar on the screen every so often, supposedly showing the progress of the competitors (to see them going backwards was not unusual.) The whole thing was superbly narrated in rhyming couplets by Dave Wilcox.

So who were those drivers?

Peter Perfect: The vain Mr Perfect had the most implausibly square jaw, drove the Turbo Terrific, and was sweet on Penelope Pitstop, whom he loved second only to himself.

Sergeant Blast & Private Meekly: This military duo drove the Army Surplus Special, which could act as a tank, steamroller, or any other heavy-duty vehicle.

Lazy Luke & Blubber Bear: Luke was an idle redneck who was so lazy that his Arkansas Chuggabug was just his veranda on wheels, complete with a stove for an engine. His co-driver was Blubber Bear, and the slightly odd thing was that Blubber had the only seat (a rocking chair), so Luke sat on his lap. That kind of thing is probably legal in Arkansas.

The Ant Hill Mob: This was a gang of Chicago mobsters led by Clyde, who were all midgets and who rode in the Bullet-Proof Bomb. They were nice guys really, and were particularly concerned that Penelope Pitstop came to no harm.

Red Max: Modelled on the Red Baron, Red Max rarely achieved success in the Wacky Races, partly because his Crimson Haybailer was one of the worst cars on the circuit - even worse than the Arkansas Chuggabug.

The Gruesome Twosome: Big Gruesome looked like Frankenstein’s monster, and L’il Gruesome was a miniature Dracula, and together they drove the Creepy Coupe. It had gothic candles for headlights, and could be fuelled by ghost, snake or dragon power.

Professor Pat Pending: This mad professor drove the drearily-named Convert-a-Car, which should have won every week because it could transform into pretty much anything, but Pending always managed to botch it up somehow.

Penelope Pitstop: The southern belle of the race circuit dressed entirely in pink and drove the pristine Compact Pussycat. Her maxim was “neatness counts”, and her car had various modifications to allow her to re-apply her make-up without veering off into a ditch. Penelope always managed to get into jeopardy, frequently enough to warrant her own spin-off cartoon too, The Perils of Penelope Pitstop (1969).

The Slag Brothers: Slag of course means something different in the US, referring to scree and ash, rather than these boys’ private lives. Rock and Gravel Slag were two dopey-looking cavemen who drove the Bouldermobile, for which, presumably, they had to invent the wheel.

Dick Dastardly & Muttley: The fabulous villain of the piece, Dick Dastardly had a curly moustache, pointy facial features, and the catch-phrase “drat and double drat!”, whenever one of his fiendish schemes fell apart (i.e. always.) He was accompanied by Muttley, his canine sidekick (the dog in The Great Race was called Motley), with a trademark snicker - he couldn’t care less whether Dastardly won, and actually gained most amusement from it all backfiring. Dick Dastardly would go to any lengths of cheating in order to win, and he would often sabotage Penelope Pitstop’s chances, knowing that ninety per cent of the other drivers would screech to a halt to help her. The following year, Dick and man’s best friend got their own gig, in Dastardly & Muttley and their Flying Machines.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 9/10

(Thanks to www.comedy-zone.net for the borrowed pic)

WAC-a-Day

2006-07-08T16:11:00.000Z

WAC-A-DAY
Made by: ?
Shown on: ITV
Years shown: 1985-91

Theme tune: “It’s WAC-a-Day, no school today, so what ya going to do?/Forget your chores, throw on some clothes (?), here’s what we’ve got for you/Oh, WAC-a-Day/What’s that?/Wait and see who’s on/Join now, stay tuned/Okay, let’s go!/It’s WAC-a-Day!”

WAC stood for Wide Awake Club, of which this show was a daytime spin-off, geared at lethargic children in their pyjamas, bored out of their brains in the school holidays. It was presented by none other than Timmy Mallett, along with his cockatoo, Magic, who always looked as though the whole thing was too much for him, and that he might drop off his perch at any moment. Timmy should need no introduction: he was an ageless maniac who was born to present children’s TV, and he personified the word ‘wacky’. He had a vast collection of ridiculous pairs of specs, he usually wore those luminous Bermuda shorts made fashionable by the mid eighties, and he often wore two baseball caps at the same time (twin peaks - it was a joke, see?) There would be cartoons like Go-Bots and Galaxy High School, countless rounds of Mallett’s Mallet (“It’s-a-word-assocation-game-where-you-mustn’t-pause-and-you-mustn’t-hesitate-repeat-a-word-or-say-a-word-I-don’t-like-or-you’ll-get-a-bash-on-the-head-like-this-or-like-this-look-at-each-other-and-go-bleeurgh-look-at-the-audience-at-home-and-go-bleeurgh”) where the loser got a sticking plaster to place on any part of the anatomy and wave to the folks at home with, and there was even an expedition to Kenya, where Timmy taught us all to say ‘Jambo’, and painted a lot of actually very good landscapes.

Because it was the school hols, there was a Holiday Postcards slot, and there were other ‘features’ like Wactors and Wactresses, The Manic Minute, and the WAC-saw Puzzle. Fingers In Your Ears Time gave kids the opportunity to show off their usually-limited singing talents, and Drop Your Toast was an attempt to make some unsuspecting child do exactly that by mentioning them live on national television.

Yes, Timmy Mallett was an assault on the senses in all possible ways, and you couldn’t help feeling sorry that he couldn’t get a real job where he didn’t have to leap about the place like a child with Attention Deficiency Disorder - but the fact is that there is absolutely no substitute for him. Since he retired to Timmy Towers, nobody on children’s television has matched him for sheer enthusiasm and passion for entertaining. Mind you, enough is enough.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 7/10

Ulysses 31

2006-07-08T16:03:00.000Z

ULYSSES 31
Made by: BRB International
Shown on: BBC1
Years shown: 1981, plus repeats

This is one of those weird cartoons that most people don’t talk about, because they can’t be sure that they didn’t imagine the whole thing. Ulysses 31 was set in the 31st century, and was loosely based on The Odyssey. Ulysses himself was a Barry Gibb look-alike (but ginger), who was orbiting the planet Troy with his son, Telemachus, and had to return to Earth before his wife, Penelope, married someone else. But Telemachus was kidnapped by worshippers of the Cyclops, and when Ulysses attacked and destroyed them, the gods were angered, and cast Ulysses’ ship into the far reaches of space, deleting the databanks on board, so he became utterly lost. The gods also put his crew in a permanent state of suspended animation; they were in a coma, and hung lifelessly in mid air on the ship. When Ulysses rescued Telemachus, he also saved an alien girl called Yumi, and her brother, Numinar, but Numinar is also placed under the coma curse, and his sister can only visit him and hope that he will recover. So the series was basically the long saga of Ulysses trying to find Hades in order to release his cursed crew members, and there was also a little red robot, No-No (short for ‘no, no, please don’t put the robot in the series’), belonging to Telemachus, who had helped saved his master, but was mainly there as the court jester. Ulysses 31 was a giant among kids’ cartoons, and it certainly had me gripped when I was six; I was intrigued and fearful of the comatosed ship’s crew, and used to have nightmares about it happening to me. It was one of those odd cartoons that could never have originated from the UK, and indeed didn’t, but life after school was richer because of it - and little did we know, we were actually watching an interpretation of classical mythology out of school hours.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 9/10

(Thanks to www.alvarezperea.com for the borrowed pic)

Trumpton

2006-07-08T15:59:00.000Z

TRUMPTON
Made by: Gordon Murray Puppets
Shown on: ITV
Years shown: 1967, plus endless repeats

The second of the Camberwick Green trilogy saw the villagers moving to the nearby town of Trumpton, obviously eager for the bright lights. Still narrated by Brian Cant, and with all the old characters present, there was also Miss Lovelace and her dogs; Bill Stickanick, the billboard-pasting man; the Mayor; the town clerk Mr Troop; Mrs Cabbit and Mr Platt, and the most famous team of fire-fighters on TV, led by Captain Flack - they were, of course, Pugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble and Grubb. Pugh and Pugh were identical twin brothers, by the way. Each episode would briefly focus on the town hall clock, which kept the time for Trumpton, and they would end with the fire brigade band holding a concert in the park. Bet they wished they’d stayed in Camberwick Green. Gordon Murray went to a fair bit of expense with these series, because although television was still in black and white when he started, he shot them in colour, with a mind to the future. In fact, when he finished work on Chigley, his final series of this ilk, he burned all the characters and sets so that no-one could re-use them, meaning that only his original Technicolor repeats could be shown. Cunning.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 6/10

(Thanks to www.telegoons.org for the borrowed pic)

Trap Door

2006-07-07T16:02:00.000Z

TRAP DOOR
Made by: Queensway Productions
Shown on: ITV
Years shown: 1986

Theme tune:“Don’t you open that trap door/You’re a fool if you dare/Stay away from that trapdoor/Cos there’s something down there…!”

“Somewhere in the dark and nasty regions where nobody goes stands an ancient castle. Deep within this dank and uninviting place lives Berk, overworked servant to The Thing upstairs- But that’s nothing compared to the horrors that lurk beneath The Trapdoor, for there is something down there in the dark, waiting to come out…”

So began each episode of Trap Door, one of the featured cartoons on Number 73, which has been repeated sporadically for over ten years. Narrated by Willie Rushton, this was a clay animation about Berk, a blue blob of a character, who lived with his hyper-active pet Drutt (of undetermined species), and his pal, Boni, a skull who was always full of doom and gloom. Berk was the put-upon manservant of the unseen Thing Upstairs, which always needed feeding, and was particularly partial to a certain vegetable called Thort. There were a few other weirdo characters around too, including Bubo, an irritating yellow thing with a hole in its head, and the friendly monster, Rog.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 3/10

(Thanks to www.durham21.co.uk for the borrowed pic)

Transformers

2006-07-07T15:56:00.000Z

TRANSFORMERS
Made by: Filmation
Shown on: ITV
Years shown: 1984

Most people will remember the toys better than they will the cartoon series: they were heavily advertised, expensive, and if you twisted part of them the wrong way - which was easily done - an arm or leg fell off, never to be repaired again. There was a feature-length film made of these ‘Robots in Disguise’, with such credible artists as Orson Welles and Eric Idle on vocal duties, but the TV series was made with slightly less care and cash. Basically, the Transformers were robots, waging a war between good and evil, who could masquerade as ordinary, every day vehicles. The chief goodie was the grandly-named Optimus Prime, who lived in a dormant volcano, and his principal adversary was Megatron, leader of the Decepticons (name was a bit of a give-away, really), who lived in an elaborate desert complex, and was assisted by Ravage and Soundwave. Soundwave had to be the most useless of Transformers, as his alternative guise was as a tape-recorder, which obviously made him completely immobile, and reliant on someone wanting to play the latest Michael Jackson single. There was also Ironhide, some kind of people-carrier, and various other helicopters, juggernauts and milk-floats; but this was very definitely a boys’ cartoon, unless you were a girl into cars, guns, robots and sparse plot-lines. Boys didn’t care - they were too busy smashing their Transformers into each other and breaking various vital components. Strangely, Hollywood director Michael Bay thinks that the Transformers are due a revival (surely he's in a small minority?), and they're due to make their live action film debut in 2007.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 2/10

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

Tottie or The Story of a Doll's House

2006-07-07T15:49:00.000Z

TOTTIE OR THE STORY OF A DOLL'S HOUSE
Made by: Smallfilms
Shown on: BBC
Years shown: 1984-6

Based on books by Rumer Godden, this weighty and sometimes sombre stop-motion animation focused on the toy dolls belonging to sisters Emily and Charlotte Dane. The girls had an ornate doll’s house, whose inhabitants were happy and carefree: there was Mr Plantaganet, his cheerful and dreamy wife, Birdie, and their sweet little son, Apple. Also living with them was Tottie, a wooden, painted doll, who was thoughtful and sensible and, despite being the daughter-figure, really kept the house together. In spite of the contented existence that the dolls had, there was always a feeling of foreboding, because the dolls were never in control of their own destiny - they had to wish very hard and hope that good things would happen. Sadly, they didn’t. The Dane girls were given an antique porcelain doll called Marchpane, who they place in the house with the Plantaganets, and she was an evil cuckoo in the nest from day one. She openly schemed to become foremost in Emily and Charlotte’s affections, loathed Birdie’s open and trusting nature, detested Mr Plantaganet’s feebleness, and did her very best to lead Apple astray and turn him against his mother. Having gained the measure of her house-mates, Marchpane used the dolls’ house lights, which contain real paraffin, to start a fire, and trap Apple. She guessed that Birdie would try to save her little boy, and knew that Birdie was made of cellulose and would burn very quickly and easily - and that was exactly what happens. Birdie saved Apple, but became a martyr in doing so, meaning that Tottie becomes perhaps the first programme aimed at small children to contain a murder. Tottie was a beautifully filmed, thoughtfully made series, but it was terribly, terribly upsetting, and made you realise just how helpless dolls would be if they were really alive, and how reliant on a ‘higher power’, in this case the fickleness of two little girls. There is something very Ibsen-esque about Tottie (Henrik Ibsen wrote a play called The Dolls’ House, of course), and its vision of fate and predestination; and Marchpane is like Hedda Gabler - vain, controlling and destructive. Heavy stuff. You should never have watched this without a) your mother present or b) valium handy.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 6/10

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

Thundercats

2006-07-06T10:56:00.000Z

THUNDERCATS
Made by: Rankin/Bass
Shown on: BBC1
Years shown: 1985

With its 80s electric guitar-driven theme music, Thundercats was yet another rubbishy cartoon with massive merchandising appeal (people were always having the action figures confiscated at my school.) The cats in question were feline-human crime fighters, who lived on the planet of Thundera, until it was destroyed and they had to escape to the Third Earth. Lion-o was the archetypal egotistical leader, who brandished a Sword of Omens and gave the odd trademark cry of “Thundercats, Ho!”. His second in command was Tygra, whose weapon was a Bolo whip, and who could become invisible at will (strictly for the benefit of the group, of course.) Cheetara was the token glamorous female, with a pretty useless bow-staff, and then there was Panthro, the eldest of the Thundercats, who had to make do with a quote-unquote ‘fighting stick’. For sickeningly-cute factor, there were Wily-Kit and Wily-Kat, the bratty kids; and for the wildly irritating factor, we had Snarf, Lion-o’s former nursemaid, who won’t leave him alone.

One thing that can be said for the shameful display which was Thundercats was that the baddies were genuinely quite scary. The chief antagonist was the terrifying Mumm-ra, a mummy who looked perpetually angry that someone had awaken him from his eternal slumber, and who would shake his bandages when riled. He employed a choice selection of willing mutants, including Slithe, Mankian, Jackalman, Vultureman and Rataro, but why is it that these cronies never have a brain-cell between them, and can be outwitted by a bunch of overgrown cats?

SQUARE EYES RATING 2/10

Thunderbirds

2006-07-06T10:46:00.000Z

THUNDERBIRDS
Made by: Gerry Anderson
Shown on: BBC
Years shown: 1965-66, plus many repeats

Gerry Anderson and his wife Sylvia were responsible for a string of successful and completely unique TV series, including Super Car, Fireball XL5, Captain Scarlet and Stingray - but the boys at International Rescue will always be the best loved. When Anderson was first approached to make a series with marionettes, he was less than enthusiastic because he had designs on being a big movie director - so, as a compromise, he tried to make his puppet shows as close to live action as he could, which included those cut-scenes with real hands replacing the hands of the puppets. To give the programme more commercial appeal and cool factor, British Anderson decided to employ American voice-over artists for his starring family.

Set in 2065, multi-millionaire Jeff Tracy lives on his own private Tracy Island, in the Pacific Ocean, with his squad of sons and servants. As the story goes, Jeff was one of the first men to walk on the moon and, in his middle-age, decided to be philanthropic and set up the International Rescue organisation, designed to protect the world from James Bond-type villains. Concealed within his island were a fleet of state-of-the-art machines, driven or piloted by each of the Tracy brothers, poised to be called to an international emergency.

Scott Tracy, 30, was the oldest of the boys; he was the sensible, responsible (read: boring) one, and wore the light blue sash on his uniform. He piloted the vanguard vehicle, Thunderbird 1, an ultrasonic rocket, and Scott was usually the first at the scene of a disaster. His vehicle launched from beneath the family’s swimming pool, which could be unfortunate for anyone taking a dip at the time.

Virgil Tracy, operator of Thunderbird 2, and wearer of the yellow sash, was 27 years old and considered to be the most serious and bookish of the brothers - he also entertained his family with his expert piano playing, confirming that it really was a barrel of laughs on Tracy Island. Thunderbird 2 was a huge, green behemoth of a machine with its own atomic pile, and was often employed to do some serious damage; it had a variety of different ‘pods’ which Virgil chose between, depending on the nature of the mission.

Twenty-one year old Alan Tracy was blond, baby-faced, liked potholing, and fancied himself as something of a ladies’ man. When he was not on a mission, he was romancing Tin-Tin, the daughter of the Tracys’ chef (and not a Belgian boy-reporter), which was not surprising, as she was the only female on the island besides Grandma Tracy. Alan caused all kinds of damage at university, including crashing a home-made rocket into the science lab, and instead of cutting his allowance, his benevolent dad decided to send him for astronaut training. The slightly reckless Alan, with his off-white sash, was given far too much responsibility in all honesty: he co-piloted Thunderbird 2 when needed, and he was the sole controller of Thunderbird 3, a bright orange spaceship designed for space exploration. He was also supposed to take turns in manning Thunderbird 5, Jeff Tracy’s very own space station, but more often than not he left John Tracy stuck up there for months at a time.

Now, if Alan was his dad’s favourite, then Gordon had to be the black sheep of the Tracy clan, perhaps because he was under the impression he was a great comedian, and his sober father seems to lack a sense of humour. Gordon, 22, clearly felt the need to be the clown to make up for the fact that he was the least good-looking of the boys…and ginger. He wore the orange sash (to compliment his hair, perhaps) and was a trained aquanaut, piloting Thunderbird 4, the subterranean craft. Tiny, yellow Thunderbird 4 was contained in one of the pods of Thunderbird 2, and was hardly ever used, meaning that Gordon spent much of his time lounging around the house and getting under his father’s feet.

Somehow (probably via a golden handshake to someone), Jeff Tracy managed to get permission to build a space station, and he put his middle son, John, in charge of it. The most intellectual of the brothers (he was a Harvard grad, don’t you know), blond, blue-eyed John spent most of his life isolated hundreds of miles above earth, where he supposedly monitored all of the emergencies happening at ground level. John (bearer of the rather fetching lilac sash) was a great dreamer, which was probably as a result of being on his own for too long, and it was just as well that his favourite hobby was astronomy. It was Gerry Anderson’s original intention that John be the hero of the piece, but when his puppet didn’t come out as envisaged, he was given a peripheral role, and Scott was boosted up the ladder to replace him.

So that’s the boys, but not the extent of the team. Also lodging at Tracy Island was Hiram K.Hackenbacker, better known as Brains, a 25 year old Cambridge University graduate, who designed and modified most of the International Rescue vehicles, including the Mole (a drilling machine) and the Firefly (a robust fire-extinguishing vehicle.) To be brutally honest, he looked like a complete nerd with no social skills and bad glasses, but he was sometimes required to leave the safety of the island to advise on some of the missions.

And if Brains was the, er, brains, then Lady Penelope was the beauty (and brains.) Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward, who took much of her style from Honor Blackman in The Avengers, was a sophisticated British socialite, who also acted as an agent for Jeff Tracy. She began her career in the British Secret Service, and lived in Creighton Hall in Kent. The 27 year old blonde (elegantly voiced by Sylvia Anderson) always enjoyed some flirtatious banter with Scott Tracy, and was clearly having some kind of affair with him, which his father would no doubt have heartily disapproved of.

Lady Penelope’s chauffeur and confidante was the middle-aged Aloysius Parker (how many servants are called Aloysius?!), a former safe-breaker and a top-rate mechanic, who spoke with an accent that Gerry Anderson obviously approximated British working class. He drove ‘M’Lady’s’ pink Rolls-Royce, registration FAB 1, which had been customised to conceal various pieces of weaponry behind its silver grill, including a machine gun, laser cannons and missile launchers. That would surprise the Kwik-Fit mechanics. Lucky for Jeff Tracy, much of the world’s criminal activity seemed to be centred in the south of England, so Lady Penelope was often right in the thick of things.

As previously mentioned, the Tracys had a chef called Kyrano, a Malaysian with a pretty young daughter he dogged with the name Tin-Tin. Unfortunately for Kyrano, he had an evil half-brother, an alleged master of disguise known as The Hood, who was Jeff Tracy’s arch enemy. The Hood was a bald slap-head who lives in a secret temple somewhere in the Malaysian jungle, from where he practised voodoo and black magic; he could control people with his weird, glowing eyes, and had some bizarre, supernatural hold over Kyrano, meaning he could control him to gain access to Tracy family secrets.

Thunderbirds has an unwavering appeal, and although it was originally broadcast in the sixties at the cost of the equivalent of £1 million per episode, it enjoyed a resurgence of popularity in the early nineties (the dolls were the must-have toy of Christmas 1992 ,and Blue Peter showed us how to make Tracy Island from a pile of boxes and some paper-maché), and again nearly a decade later. Thunderbirds was essentially like a succession of great spy films, and with its boys-and-their-toys gadgetry, it was a hit predominantly with young males, but had enough ‘human’ drama to garner a wider appeal. The one element that does age it, though, was the fact that the Tracys and Lady Penelope all smoked like chimneys and drank like fish, which is no way for good all-American boys to behave, and no way for Lady Penelope to keep her youthful complexion.

By the way, you might think that Jeff Tracy burdened some of his sons with pretty appalling names, but each of the Tracy brothers were named after American astronauts: Malcolm Scott Carpenter, Virgil ‘Gus’ Grissom, Alan B. Shepherd, Gordon Cooper and John Herschel Glenn.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 9/10

Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends

2006-07-06T10:39:00.000Z

THOMAS THE TANK ENGINE AND FRIENDS
Made by: Cleanwater/Britt Allcroft/Central Television
Shown on: ITV
Years shown: original series 1984-6, but he's still puffing along

The Reverend Wilbert Awdry first brought Thomas and pals to life in his 1940s storybooks, but it was another four decades before the chuffing one finally got his own television series. Thomas the Tank Engine came to be known and loved all over the world, despite its simple concept, and the fact that it was just like watching your uncle’s model railway in action - the model people didn’t even move! The series was set on the dubiously-named, but peaceful and charming Island of Sodor, where Sir Topham Hat - known to all the engines, rather cruelly, as The Fat Controller - was a Winston Churchill figure, and ran the railway system. Unlike most controllers, his engines were alive, with their own personalities, and were always causing him some kind of grief.

The hero was the blue number 1 engine, Thomas, who was usually sensible, but sometimes got a bit too big for his pistons. There were also (intake of breath): number 2 engine Edward, green number 3 engine Henry, James the mixed-traffic engine, Percy the saddle tank, Toby the tram engine, Montague the Great Western engine (nicknamed ‘Duck’), Donald and Douglas the twin black engines, Gordon the blue engine, Oliver the little green engine, and Diesel the, er, diesel engine. Diesel was ably assisted by Daisy, the diesel rail car, and Thomas himself often had a threesome with Annie and Claribel, his amiable passenger carriages. Operating outside the train yard were Terence Tractor, Harold Helicopter, Bertie Bus, and Ringo the Beatle - oh sorry, he was the programme’s narrator.

Thomas the Tank Engine seemed to run forever, but there was one episode that I must have seen half a dozen times, and that was the one where vain and imperious Gordon refused to pull a coal truck, and as a penalty, the Fat Controller had him bricked into a tunnel. This stuck with me over the years because I always felt that the punishment hardly fitted the crime - poor Gordon was stuck in there for ages, and he became dirtier and dirtier, and he started to rust. Still brings tears to my eyes.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 7/10

(Thanks to www.worldofbubble.com for the borrowed pic)

Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles

2006-07-03T15:07:00.000Z

TEENAGE MUTANT HERO TURTLES
Made by: Mirage
Shown on: BBC
Years shown: 1987-96

Theme tune: “Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles/ Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles/Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles/Heroes in a half-shell, Turtle Power!/They’re the world’s most fiercesome fighting team/They’re heroes in a half-shell and they’re green/When the evil Shredder attacks/Those Turtle boys don’t cut him no slack/Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles…Leonardo leads, Donatello does machines/Raphael is cool, but crude/Michaelangelo is a party-dude!/Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles/Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles/Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles/Heroes in a half-shell, Turtle Power!”

Cowabunga! The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were the comic-book creations of Americans Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird back in 1984, but it was a few years before this diluted cartoon version reached our screens. But once the Turtles landed, they were everywhere: lunch-boxes, pencil-cases, T-shirts, bum-bags, trainers, action figures, trading cards, and even their own line in frozen pizzas (including the surprisingly good apple and cheese flavour.) Their name had to be altered to Hero Turtles in the UK, although as the cartoon itself wasn’t altered, it is unlikely this would have done much to deter playground violence - it just made them seem more harmless to concerned parents.

So, what was the back-story to this mean, green fighting machine? Set in New York, Hamato Yoshi is cheated out of the leadership of his martial arts school by a treacherous student, and is forced to flee and live in poverty in the sewers. Why he didn’t settle for the YMCA is not made clear. Anyway, he is all alone until, one day, a young boy stumbles on the street and his pet turtles fall from their tank and into the sewers. Somehow, the tiny turtles land in the spilt radioactive contents of an old canister, and were metamorphosed into humanoid turtles. At the same time, Yoshi was transformed into a humanoid sewer-rat, and took on the name Splinter. He trained the turtles as his students, teaching them to be a Ninja force for good, and also introduced them to their staple food of pizza. Leonardo, in the blue bandanna, was the natural leader; he was the strong, silent type, was serious about his studies, and fought with a katana sword. Equally studious was Donatello, a science enthusiast, who wore a purple bandanna, and was responsible for inventing most of the Turtles machines and weaponry. Then there was Raphael, who was undoubtedly the coolest; he fought with jitte knives, wore red, and had a quick-witted and sardonic reply for everyone. Finally, there was the youngest of the bunch, Michaelangelo (Eastman and Laird misspelled his name, but it was never altered), who wore the orange bandanna, spoke like a Californian surfer, and liked nothing better than a par-tay.

The Turtles seemed to have two purposes in life, which usually coincided in some way: to protect April O’Neil, and to defeat Shredder. April was a jump-suited reporter for Channel 6 News, who first encountered the amphibian teenagers when she climbed into the sewer to escape some of Shredder’s henchmen. Shredder is also known as Oruku Saki, Splinter’s wayward student, and having turned the martial arts school against their old master, and renaming them The Foot, he plans to take over the world. But he in turn was doing someone else’s dirty-work, namely Krang, a repulsive brain-like alien, who lived in a tank in the underground Techno Drome. In order to add muscle to his crusade, Shredder got hold of a couple of street hoodlums, Rocksteady and Bebop, and somehow combined them with a rhino and boar he happened to have around the place, creating a humanoid punk rhinoceros, and a humanoid New Wave boar. Needless to say, what they had in muscle, they lack in grey matter.

Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles also spawned a number of live-action films, critically panned but commercially fairly successful. I am loath to say it, because on paper the concept and content are less than mind-blowing, but the Turtles somehow surpassed the majority of shoddy action animations (Dungeons & Dragons, Defenders of the Earth etc.) because there was something likeable about them. Certainly superior to the vastly amusing-for-the-wrong-reasons Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers, who came along during the twilight of the Turtles career.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 4/10

(Thanks to www.badfads.com for the borrowed pic)

T-Bag

2006-07-03T15:00:00.000Z

T-BAG
Made by: Thames TV
Shown on: ITV
Years shown: mid 80s-early 90s

Elizabeth Estenson starred as the tea-addicted witch Talula Bag, who somehow lived in a teapot in an antique shop. Her objective: total world domination. But unfortunately for her, the only aid she had in this task was a blond kid, T-Shirt (John Hasler), who she’d somehow trapped in her little world.

Each of the seemingly innumerable series progressed in exactly the same manner. A young girl would enter the antique shop with the intention of buying something nice for her mum/granny/therapist, but would be zapped into the teapot by T-Bag as soon as she touched it. Once inside, the girl would be dispatched on missions by T-Bag to collect a different object every episode, which gave the whole thing a bit of a Crystal Maze feel, but which somehow forwarded the witch’s chances of become the supreme world dictator. Midway in the series, T-Shirt would secretly join forces with the girl, and they would always succeed in thwarting T-Bag, and sending her spinning back into the teapot for another series, although T-Shirt never managed to liberate himself. Still, his double-dealing was so predictable that I always wondered why T-Bag didn’t just have the little brat vaporised, or at least turned into a ferret? After the fourth series, Talula was replaced by her sister, Tabitha Bag (Georgina Hale), although the now teenage T-Shirt still moped around waiting for the next stage-school girl to arrive down the spout.

For those who fondly remember these luke-warm paranormal antics, here is a comprehensive run-down of the series we were treated to by writers Lee Pressman and Grant Cathro: T-Bag Strikes Again, T-Bag Bounces Back, T-Bag and the Revenge of the T-Set, T-Bag and the Pearls of Wisdom, T-Bag and the Rings of Olympus, T-Bag and the Sunstones of Montesuma, and Take Off with T-Bag.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 5/10

Superted

2006-07-03T14:54:00.000Z

SUPERTED
Made by: S4C
Shown on: BBC
Years shown: 1982, plus repeats

Bizarrely, Superted began life as a mascot for the South Wales Electricity Board, but would later on appear on both my toothbrush and space-hopper. He was an unstoppable furry merchandising machine. The cartoon began in the same way every episode, by telling the tale of how Superted came to be imbued with super powers: he was made in a factory, but because he was faulty (see also The Raggy Dolls), he was chucked into a store room. One night, a Spotty Man from another planet came and sprinkled ‘magic dust’ on him, meaning that he could quite freakishly unzip his furry skin and reveal a bright red superhero outfit. Considering that this wasn’t animation or storytelling of a very high quality, Superted was hugely popular in playgrounds up and down the country, and it attracted a host of voice artists. Derek Griffiths played the titular ted, while Jon Pertwee was the yellow and green Spotty Man; the villains were an malevolent cowboy, Texas Pete, and his sidekicks, Skeleton (Melvyn Hayes) and Bulk (Roy Kinnear.) Although the series is now a frightening twenty years old, I noticed in my local Superdrug that Superted is still alive and kicking in the form of children’s chewable vitamin tablets. That must at least be a unique claim.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 5/10

(Thanks to www.abbeyhomemedia.com for the borrowed pic)

Supergran

2006-06-30T15:56:00.000Z

SUPERGRAN
Made by: Tyne Tees
Shown on: ITV
Years shown: 1985-87

Theme tune: “Stand back Superman, Iceman, Spiderman, Batman and Robin too/Don’t want to cause a ruckus for BA Baracus/But I’ve got a match for you…”

Based on books by Forrest Wilson, Supergran was a comedy adventure series about the most unlikely of superheroes - and you thought Wonder Woman was implausible. Supergran (Gudrun Ure) had accidentally acquired astonishing super-powers, and became a match for any villain lurking the streets of her home town of Chisleton. Despite Supergran having a Scottish accent, the fictional Chisleton was actually located in Tynemouth, a coastal town not too far from Newcastle…and closer still to my own home.

In fact, Supergran’s unusual method of transport, her Flycycle (actually a converted butcher’s boy bike), was long on display in The Land of Green Ginger, a converted church-cum-shopping centre in Tynemouth centre.

Anyway, enough of my exciting local heritage. The man responsible for Supergran’s inhuman abilities was Inventor Black (Bill Shine), and he was helped out by his young assistant, Edison (Holly English, and later Samantha Duffy), who was also pals with the septuagenarian law-enforcer; as was Willard (Ian Towell), an oik in a bobble hat. On the other side of the law, Supergran’s chief nemesis was The Scunner Campbell (Iain Cuthbertson), with his nephew, Tub (Lee Marshall) and his henchmen, The Muscles (Alan Snell and Brian Lewis.)

Supergran was a Sunday teatime favourite, with its blend of unashamed comedy and light drama, and it attracted an unprecedented amount of celebrities, to all appearances clambering over each other for a guest appearance. To name but a few, there was Billy Connolly (who sung the theme tune), Mike Elphick, Spike Milligan, Tim Healy, Lulu, Gary Glitter (oh dear), George Best and Eddie Kidd, all hoping they wouldn’t emerge as the most wooden.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 4/10

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

Stoppit and Tidyup

2006-06-30T15:50:00.000Z

STOPPIT AND TIDYUP
Made by: ?
Shown on: BBC
Years shown: 1987, plus repeats

Absurd doesn’t even begin to describe this five minute Terry Wogan-narrated cartoon, with a vaguely environmental message. It was set in the somewhat oppressive land of Do-As-You’re-Told, where Stoppit (a furry ball who got accidentally squashed a lot) and his pal Tidyup (a foghorn-voiced blue thing with purple hair) lived. That was about it. There would usually be a minor story involved, such as the characters solving a puzzle, but it relied on the outlandishness and peculiarity of its boundless range of support characters. They were as follows: Comb-Your-Hair (with his eyes obscured by a fringe), Wash-Your-Face (filthy, of course), Hurry-Up (an orange ball of harassed energy), Go-And-Play (who wore a nappy and had lots of nursery toys), “poor little” Calm-Down (who brandished an umbrella), “nasty little” Not-Now, Bee-Have and Bee-Quiet (mutated bees, funnily enough), “sleepy old” Go-To-Bed (perennially tired), Don’t-Do-That (some kind of itchy-looking red insect), Take-Care (purple and anxious looking), Clean-Your-Teeth (with an unnervingly big smile), and a whole tribe of Sit-Downs. Best of all though, was the furious Big Bad I-Said-No, who was bright red and about to blow his top. Stoppit and Tidyup was absolute nonsense, and I can’t do it full justice on paper because it is simply impossible to recreate those weird noises that each character had. Halfway between Edward Lear and a very nasty experiment with hallucinogens, it was just about tongue-in-cheek enough to make watching it a repeatable experience.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 5/10

(Thanks to www.toonhound.com for the borrowed pic)

Stop That Laughing at the Back

2006-06-30T15:42:00.000Z

STOP THAT LAUGHING AT THE BACK
Made by: Granada
Shown on: ITV
Years shown: 1987

This thirty minute sketch show was one of a number of short-lived experiments on CITV in the mid 1980s, in the same vein as Your Mother Wouldn’t Like It. On a good day, it was trying to be anarchical in a watered-down Spitting ImageBlue Peter. kind of a way, and it relied largely on the universal agreement among pre and early teens that both parents and teachers are crap and seriously uncool. It starred Paul Bradley, Michael Fenton Stevens, Jo Unwin, Nimmy March and also featured - for some undisclosed reason - the pop duo Hue and Cry; and it included a slot called ‘Aw, I’m Not Doing That!’, which was an advice column for getting out of doing household chores. This show was part of why most parents switched the television to BBC and then removed the batteries from the remote, so their children would be forced to watch

SQUARE EYES RATING: 2/10

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

Spiderman and His Amazing Friends

2006-06-29T13:55:00.000Z

SPIDERMAN AND HIS AMAZING FRIENDS
Made by: Marvel
Shown on: BBC
Years shown: 1981-86
Theme tune: “Spiderman, Spiderman, does whatever a spider can/Look out, here comes the Spiderman!”

Based loosely on the original Marvel comics, and the seventies drama series starring Nick ‘Friedrich in The Sound of Music’ Hammond, this eighties kid-friendly cartoon series was a huge hit, and resulted in an army of small children, myself included, running around in red and blue Spiderman outfits. As the old legend goes, ordinary-joe Peter Parker, was bitten by a radioactive spider, and as a result he was able to turn into crime-fighting wunderkind, Spiderman, able to leap and spin webs just like a real arachnid, and defeat various ne’er-do-wells, such as the Green Goblin (not to be confused with the Green Goddess of TVAM fame.) And his wholesome girlfriend, Mary Jane Watson, was none the wiser. But in this eighties twist, Peter lived in a swish loft apartment with a couple of similarly freakish friends: Bobby Drake was a chisel-jawed hunk who turned into the ultra-cool Iceman, able to surf on the trail of ice he created; and Anjelica Jones was the feisty Firestar, who had pyromaniacal capabilities and spent a lot of the time melting the paths that Iceman had laid. Team-work or counter-productivity? It could make flat-sharing very difficult.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 6/10

Spatz

2006-06-29T13:41:00.000Z

SPATZ
Made by: Producers Group International/Thames TV
Shown on: ITV
Years shown: 1989-92

It is impossible to overestimate just how highly I rated this joint British and Canadian sitcom venture when I was a pre-teen, and I still think it remains one of the most vastly underrated and overlooked kids’ programmes of the last decade. And still it fell short of its potential because, with a few little tweaks, it would have made a successful crossover to mainstream adults’ viewing - how many children’s shows will handcuff their two leads together for the night?

Spatz was the zenith of Lee Pressman and Grant Cathro’s writing partnership (see also Mike and Angelo, T-Bag), a comedy inspired equally by British slapstick humour, and slick and innovative American programming like Moonlighting. To explain, Spatz was a fictitious Canadian fast-food restaurant chain, owned by millionaire Louis Frapelli, with its branch in central London the setting for the programme. The setting was normal, but the antics of the staff were not.

Canadian Karen Hansson (Jennifer Calvert), the Spatz European Co-ordinator, looked like a cross between Jerry Hall and Lauren Bacall dressed in a power-suit - but only someone with a death-wish would treat her as such. She was ruthless, power-obsessed and fierce, and nothing dared come between her and the precious dollar. Much to her chagrin, she was based in the London branch, which meant sharing a workspace with the branch manager, Thomas Jefferson ‘TJ’ Strickland, a fellow Canadian (played by Paul Michael.) And to her utter exasperation, the handsome and laid-back TJ was her complete antithesis: he was cool and calm, with a grin a mile wide, and although he was more than competent as a manager, TJ always put staff and customer welfare before money. Karen loathed his jokes, his flippancy and the fact that he never rose to her bait - but when these two argued, you could be mistaken for thinking you were watching David Addison and Maddie Hayes. Karen had a number of set phrases, including “Strickland! Office! Now!” and “You’re not funny, Strickland”, and thought nothing of throwing him out of his own office; but she really saw red when faced with TJ’s sometime girlfriend, Julie (Catherine Russell.) The sexual tension between TJ and his boss was unmistakable, and although Karen informed him that she’d “rather put my hand down a camel’s throat than touch you”, the series bowed out with a kiss under the mistletoe - although, admittedly, there was a degree of reluctance on Karen’s part.

Down on the shop floor the Brits ruled the roost. Among the burger-flippers was Dexter Williams (Vas Blackwood), who would do anything to further his career prospects and become Assistant Manager, and his friend, Vince Powers (Joe Greco), a cockney chancer, with a trick up his sleeve for every hour of the day. They were largely kept in check by the girls: there was the eminently sensible Debbie Wesley (Stephanie Charles), Lily Quang (Ling Tai), a politically-minded, bright girl working to pay for her university course, and Jo Collins (Sue Devaney), a cheeky northerner who could give as much lip - and trouble - as she got. The team was completed by Stanley Rydale (Jonathan Copestake), who was extremely earnest, but also extremely dense, and was usually three hours behind everyone else. When Jo left after the first series, she was replaced by Fiona ‘Freddy’ Reddy (Katy Murphy), a mad Celtic FC fan who dealt out as much Scots doom and superstition as Dad’s Army’s Private Frazer.

The plot-lines were wildly implausible, and seemed to get more surreal as the series progressed, but the often razor-sharp repartee made every episode of Spatz a great piece of comedy. Over the three years, the staff were the target of local mobsters, lost their restaurant in a bet to the local rivals, Blimpy’s, transformed Spatz into a medieval-style eaterie for American tourists, battled a fire that Karen caused accidentally with a toaster, were hit by radical environmental protesters and hosted a ballroom dancing contest, a wedding reception, and a junior talent competition. And that wasn’t the half of it. The only downside to the show, as with Pressman and Cathro’s other offerings, was the persistent and liberal use of canned laughter.

A number of unlikely actors made appearances during the three series of Spatz, including Gary Lineker (chronic acting, by the way), Nicholas Parsons, and Terry Hall with Lenny the Lion. Some subsequently successful actors also found their way to the big time via this fast-food joint: Danny John-Jules twice played self-confessed superhero, Captain Electric, while holding down jobs on Red Dwarf and Maid Marian; Samantha Janus appeared briefly as a love-interest for Vince; David Harewood appeared on and off as Debbie’s bumbling, clueless fiancé, Derek Puley; and Rhys Ifans got his break as a Welsh builder who briefly romanced Freddy. Vas Blackwood, of course, has latterly appeared in such films as Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998) and Mean Machine (2001), while Sue Devaney found further success on BBC’s Casualty and dinnerladies, and Jennifer Calvert returned to Canada and a regular gig on the comedy The Chris Isaak Show.

Just don’t eat the Ocean Spatz.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 10/10

(Thanks to David's fantastic Spatz website, the only one on the web, for the borrowed pic of Jennifer Calvert as Karen Hansson - google 'Spatz' to find it)

The Sooty Show

2006-06-29T13:32:00.000Z

THE SOOTY SHOW
Made by: BBC/Granada TV
Shown on: BBC/ITV
Years shown: 1954 - 2001 (?)

Few television shows - aimed at children or otherwise - can boast the staying-power of Britain’s favourite yellow glove puppet, and his assistants. Back in the pioneering days of television, a balding Harry Corbett stood behind a counter in his smart suit, with Sooty on one hand and Sweep on the other, chatting to them and the children at home, and doing basic magic tricks with Sooty. Sooty, for anyone who has somehow missed this televisual phenomenon, was a yellow bear puppet with black ears, who didn’t speak, but whispered into this puppeteer’s ear instead. Despite his silence, you always knew what he was saying, and he came across as both shrewd and cheeky. Then there was Sweep, introduced a few years later - a grey dog puppet with floppy black ears, who squeaked expressively and came across as rash, brash and a bit of a dunce . Sooty, as previously mentioned, was capable of feats of magic, and had his own wand and magic spell, namely, “Izzy, wizzy, let’s get busy!”

When Corbett died, the business was taken over by his bearded son, Matthew, who looked after Sooty right up until the mid nineties. Sooty was by now set in a house, where Corbett lived with Sooty and Sweep, and also Soo, a white panda bear who - horror of horrors! - actually spoke, which made her far more irritating than the others. Soo was a bit of a moralising know-all, who was forever warning Matthew against doing stupid things (they formed the crux of the show, didn’t she realise?) and telling Sooty and Sweep off for various pranks and misdeeds. This unusual family was occasionally visited by Connie, a middle-aged woman who seemed to love this strange household (perhaps she was Matthew’s social worker, checking up on how he was coping), and then permanently joined by a fourth puppet, Scampy. Scampy was Sooty’s little cousin, and was dressed in school uniform to show how young he was, but nobody seemed to notice that the others were actually totally naked. The Matthew Corbett years were a lot more lively, with none of the constrictions his father had, and there was a lot of scope for farce - being soaked by hoses, gunged by the contents of blenders, and splattered with custard pies were all par for the course. And the same formula never really became tired.

In later series, the gang moved and ran a junk shop, which became the primary set, although they also had a van, and would drive around the town. Occasions like this would mean that we would see Sooty and Sweep’s feet for the first time in over forty years, which was almost a cheeky wink at older siblings who might upset their younger brothers and sisters by saying, “Yeah, but they’re just puppets”.

Sooty is still alive and well in cartoon format these days, but can you remember that the original programme once boasted an unlikely early appearance by comedian Rory McGrath, in a diving suit, no less?!

SQUARE EYES RATING: 6/10

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

Simon and the Witch

2006-06-28T13:07:00.000Z

SIMON AND THE WITCH
Made by: ?
Shown on: BBC
Years shown: 1987-88

Based on books by Margaret Stuart Barry, this children’s comedy starred Hugh Pollard as Simon, a boy who befriends Elizabeth Spriggs’ fantastically mischievous witch, who actually didn’t do much harm at all. Simon was friends with spiteful schoolgirl Sally (future Eastenders star, Nicola Stapleton) and Cuthbert (Ilan Ostlove), who was rather feeble and lived with his frightfully posh aunt, Lady Fox-Custard (pronounced ‘Folks-Custaard’), played by Joan Simms. Fox-Custard had her own butler, Hopkins, but between them they were unable to thwart the witch and her pranks - in fact, Simon was the sensible one, and had to keep this mad granny-figure in check. Simon and the Witchfun! was twenty five minutes of high-quality after-school entertainment, and it also had a great title sequence, where Simon and the witch held up cardboard placards with the cast and crew’s names on them, and it just looked so much

SQUARE EYES RATING: 5/10

(Thanks to www.tvacres.com for the borrowed pic)

Shoe People

2006-06-28T12:52:00.000Z

SHOE PEOPLE
Made by: Fairwater Films
Shown on: ITV
Years shown: 1987
Theme tune: “Sh-sh-sh shoooo people, doo be doo be doo be doo…”

The Justin Hayward theme is about the only thing I do remember about Shoe People, except that it was a bit like the equally unexciting Munch Bunch, but used footwear instead of fresh fruit. Basically, it was about a lot of different kinds of shoes, whose type determined their personality. They lived in the back room of the Shoe Repairs Shop, but at night they come to life and the magical Shoe Town appears (someone has been sniffing too much shoe polish, obviously.)

The star of this cartoon was Trampy, a scruffy boot with a detached sole (don’t look for any deeper meaning in this unintentional pun, please), but there was also PC Boot, Wellington, Charlie the clown shoe, Sergeant Major, Sneaker the burglar, Guilder Van der Clog, Flip Flop, Mr Potter , Sid Slipper, Margot the pink ballet slipper and her baby, Bootee.

TVAM was also responsible for the execrable ‘saviour’ of breakfast television, Roland Rat (another creation we can blame Anne Wood for), when they really should have just given us more time with the Green Goddess. Strangely, Shoe People was very popular in the Soviet Union, and the programme's creator James Driscoll even got to meet Mikhail Gorbachev. They must have been yearning for the Berlin Wall to come down so they could get their hands on even more bourgeois capitalist cartoons.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 2/10

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

She-Ra

2006-06-28T12:48:00.000Z

SHE-RA
Made by: Mattel
Shown on: BBC
Years shown: 1985

Witnessing the unbelievable success of their product spin-off, He-Man, Mattel launched a new range of toys aimed at girls and a cartoon to accompany it. The series mythology had Angella as Queen of Brightmoon, and her daughter Glimmer, the princess, as the leader of a Great Rebellion. Then along came Adora of Etheria, who was also He-Man’s sister, who had the ability to transform into She-Ra, self-confessed “Princess of Power!”. Move aside Glimmer, here was a real heroine! She-Ra wore a gold head-dress studded with a big red jewel, and she rode into the breach on Swift Wind, a unicorn.

With a whole world of marketing possibilities in front of them, the animators created a range of dynamic support characters, mostly with crap names. There was Frosta, who lived in Castle Chill, in the Kingdom of Snows; Peek-a-Blue, who had a set of eyes in her tail (!) which allowed her to see the future; Double-Trouble, a double-agent (her name was a bit of give-away though, wasn’t it?) who literally had two faces; Mermistra, a mermaid who could turn into a human; and Castaspella, a magician from Mystacor; Sweet-Bea, who just dressed like a bee (possibly related to Buzz-Off, from He-Man.)

Then, there was Flutterina, a weird owl/koala hybrid with butterfly wings, who She-Ra and pals found in a cocoon and, frankly, should have left there.

Naturally, there were some villains to be defeated: there was Catra and her lion called Clawdeen, who had a bright pink perm (the lion, that is); Entrapta, who just sounds untrustworthy; and Hordak, from Horde World.

You probably don’t need to be told that She-Ra was laughably bad, and that each episode was basically the same, but it achieved what it set out to do - it sold a lot of action figures and accessories (Double-Trouble was the best because you could flip between her two faces in a very amusing way) to lot of little girls who thought He-Man was too rough and boyish. Actually, I did prefer He-Man, and used to have a plastic sword which I kept down the back of my jumper in case of an emergency - and I looked better with a blond bobbed haircut as well.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 1/10

Scooby Doo

2006-06-27T16:32:00.000Z

SCOOBY DOO
Made by: Hanna Barbera
Shown on: BBC
Years shown: 1969 onwards
Theme tune: “Scooby dooby doo, where are you?/We need some help from you now…”

William Hanna and Joseph Barbera are undoubted legends of the television world, and have been prolific programme-makers over an amazing five decades. But let’s not get carried away. There have been the good, admittedly (The Flintstones, Wacky Races), but there was also the bad (Captain Caveman & the Teen Angels, Fonz & the Happy Days Gang), as well as the downright weird (Young Samson & Goliath, Amazing Chan & the Chan Clan.) And to be honest, Scooby-Doo wasn’t the sanest of concepts. Scooby-Doo himself was a giant dog of undetermined breed, who half barked, half talked, and who - despite the theme song - was no help at all. He got his name from the song ‘Strangers in the Night’ by Frank Sinatra, which had the filler line, “doo be doo be doo”. Yes, really.

Scooby travelled around in the Mystery Machine, a brightly painted combi-van, with a bunch of ‘kids’ who were intent on solving paranormal crimes, not for money, but seemingly for the good of their health. The gang’s leader was the square-jawed Fred, with his blond helmet-hair and an orange neckerchief - he was very self-righteous and patronising, and was clearly up to no good with the glamorous redhead, Daphne (he was always concocting situations where the gang would have to split up, and he and Daphne would go one way…) The brains of the operation was Velma, the nerdy librarian type, who wore glasses and a cosy polo-neck, and it was she who always got to the bottom of the mystery. Lastly, there was Shaggy, who was intended by the animators to be a hippy, but just looked more like a badly-dressed college drop-out (often the same thing, I suppose); he was a complete coward, and would be sent off with Scooby to check out the darkest alleys and the spookiest attics. Shaggy was voiced by American DJ, Casey Kasem, and had a number of trademark phrases, such as “Zoinks!” and “Scoob, old buddy, old friend, old pal” - and was frankly very annoying.

The plot to Scooby Doo (the series had a number of titles, including the original Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?, New Scooby-Doo Movies, Scooby’s All Stars) was the same every episode: there would be some kind of apparent haunting, but it would always turn out to have a rational explanation, and the culprit would be the only other person the gang had met. They would unmask a ghost to reveal Old Man Withers, or Mr Johnson from the Museum, who would then shake their fist and complain that they “would have got away with it, if it hadn’t been for those meddling kids.” Quite.

Then, in 1979, a real monster was born, and its name was Scrappy-Doo. Scooby and Scrappy-Doo was the same, tired formula, plus the added annoyance of Scooby’s pugnacious nephew, Scrappy, who, unlike his uncle, could talk and ‘wise-crack’. He got into more fights than Mike Tyson, and would have to be held back from doing something inadvisable every two minutes ( “Puppy Power!” he would cry, before charging into the fray) - if only someone had let him get mashed to a pulp.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 3/10

(Thanks to www.konsolen.net for the borrowed pic)

Sesame Street

2006-06-27T16:21:00.000Z

SESAME STREET
Made by: PBS/The Children's Television Workshop
Shown on: Channel 4
Years shown: 1969 - present day

Theme tune: “Sunny day, chasing the clouds away/Find my way to where the air is sweet/Can you tell me how to get/How to get to Sesame Street?”

Like all great long-running children’s TV series, Sesame Street courted its fair share of controversy, which over thirty years later, seems hard to believe. What could be contentious about a programme which teaches you to share, tolerate others, and correctly identify the letters of the alphabet? Sesame Street broke the mould because it was set in a slightly run-down Brooklyn neighbourhood, a place where real people were supposed to live, a place that they hoped the pre-school viewers would identify with. There were trash-cans lying around, washing was hung out to dry, and the people who lived in the neighbourhood were both multi-cultural and mainly working class.

But in other ways, Sesame Street probably wasn’t typical of American neighbourhoods - the inhabitants, for one, were somewhat ‘colourful’. Everyone knows that Sesame Street was the forerunner of The Muppet Show, and it was here that Jim Henson really cut his puppeteering teeth, with some of his most memorable and best-loved creations.

Most famous of all has to be Big Bird, the enormous yellow creature who was half canary, half ostrich, and who was intended as the voice of the viewing child, i.e. he was a bit dense, and needed everything spelled out for him in short sentences and with visual aids. His best friend was the woolly-mammoth-like Snuffleupagus, also intellectually-challenged, who was a couple of poor blokes doing a pantomime-horse routine.

Everyone’s favourite single-sex couple were Bert and Ernie, an Odd Couple for the kindergarten generation. Bert had a head shaped like a banana, and a prominent mono-brow, and he was the tetchy, uptight one; his room-mate Ernie wore a stripy sweater and liked his rubber ducky. He was simple but not stupid, and liked to indulge in the occasional prank on his long-suffering friend.

If Bert and Ernie’s function was to educate about the mechanics of friendships, the Two-Headed Monster surely taught us all we needed to know about co-operation and compromise (and conjoined twins?). The two halves could live harmoniously most of the time, but would often hit a brick wall when they wanted to go and do different things in different directions. Didn’t happen as often as you might expect.

One of the show’s legends was the fabulous Cookie Monster, a blue, goggle-eyed harmless maniac, obsessed with consuming large quantities of his favourite snack. He didn’t have much to say for himself, except, “Cookie! Cookie!” - unless he was presenting the ingenious Monster-Piece Theater, in the guise of Alastair Cookie-Monster.

Grover was a little more articulate; he was blue, and bandy-limbed, and he would talk to children about different issues, which would usually culminate with them all hugging him. Which was odd, as he was pretty annoying. Another somewhat grating character was Telly Monster, red with an orange nose, who was there to let children know that it was okay to be anxious about life - except that in Telly’s case, it was a real debilitating condition, seeing as he was wary of almost every commonplace object or occurrence.

One of the street’s residents was the perennially bad-tempered Oscar the Grouch. He lived in a trash-can, from which he emerged to berate people or tell them to leave him alone. Oscar was not in touch with his sensitive side. Eventually, he was joined by Maria, his female equivalent; they were obviously crazy about each other, but would never admit it.

Lest we forget, there was also Count von Count, a Dracula-alike, who was obsessed with counting everything in his sight. His counting was always punctuated with cackling laughter and the crash of thunder and lightning, but rarely did he celebrate by exsanguinating the kids in the studio.

Adding to the mayhem was slick game-show host, Guy Smiley; the cutesy and wildly popular midget-monster Elmo; piano-playing swot, Prairie Dawn; Gladys the Cow; The Amazing Mumford; and of course, Kermit the Frog, who began his career as a Sesame Street journalist, reporting on such ground-breaking events as Rapunzel letting down her hair, and Humpty Dumpty falling off the wall.

The Muppet population was counter-balanced by a selection of human neighbours, all honest, well-meaning folk, and no muggers, gang-bangers or any other unsavoury characters you might be likely to meet in downstate New York. There was fatherly Bob (Bob McGrath), Linda (Linda Bove), who was deaf and gave us the chance to learn American Sign Language (useless to Brits, obviously), David (Northern Calloway), Carlo (Carlo Alban), Susan (Loretta Long), and Gordon (Matt Robinson, then Hall Miller, and finally Roscoe Orman.) But I think everyone remembers the Hispanic sweethearts, Luis and Maria (Emilio Delgado and Sonia Manzano), who ran a repair shop, taught us all some valuable Spanish, and then had a baby - cue lots of potentially difficult questions about the facts of life from all the street’s monsters. Finally, there was old Mr Hooper who ran the news-stand; and when actor Will Lee snuffed it unexpectedly, the programme used this opportunity to teach Elmo about the grief of losing a loved one. Like The Muppet Show, Sesame Street also had its fair share of celebrity guests dropping in, including Hilary Rodham Clinton, Little Richard, and pretty much everyone in between.

In between studio sequences, there were loads of educational-slash-fun segments. There were a number of psychedelic animations to make counting and the alphabet palatable, the most celebrated of which must be that weird pinball sequence, which was on virtually every show, with the funked-up tune: “Onetwothreefourfive, sixseveneightnineten, eleventwelveeeee…” There was also one about a woman who carried a fruit basket around on her head, and a rabbit superhero, who zoomed in, crooning, “It is I, Captain Vegetable, with my carrot and my celery!”, which still didn’t make me order salads.

The part which everyone used as a toilet break was the five minute slot where we’d see what life was like for children in different parts of America/the world. Cue children skating to school in the Yukon, working in a Nike factory in India, or living in a high-rise apartment in New York. They were a bit dull, to be honest, especially if you lived in suburban Britain.

We were also frequently invited to observe that “One of these kids is doing his own thing…” or “One of these things is not like the others”, and take a wild stab at which one was the odd one out. In my opinion this was a wasted opportunity - they never had three kids skating into old ladies and one smoking a cigarette.

The songs, though, were the stuff of genius. Some of them had dubious educational value (anything sung by Ernie about his rubber ducky, or Cookie Monster’s ‘Me Lost Me Cookie at the Disco’), but then there was the inspired ‘Letter B’ to the tune of The Beatles’ ‘Let it Be’, and ‘Born to Add’ in place of Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Born to Run.’

There have been over 3000 episodes of Sesame Street, and special mention should be made of the tireless vocal artists, including Jerry Nelson, Frank Oz (Bert, Cookie, Grover, Harvey Kneeslapper, among others), and, of course, the late Jim Henson, who gave life to Ernie, Guy Smiley and Kermit. This review was brought to you today by the letters G, R and by the number 8, but is not - much as I would like it to be - a production of the Children’s Television Workshop.

SQUARE EYES RATING:10/10

(Thanks to wikipedia for the borrowed pic)

Saved by the Bell

2006-06-27T16:07:00.000Z

SAVED BY THE BELL
Made by: NBC
Shown on: Channel 4
Years shown: 1988-2000

Theme tune: "When I wake up the morning, the alarm gives out a warning/And I know I’ll never make it on time/By the time I grab my books and give myself a look/I’m at the corner just in time to see the bus drive by/It’s all right, cos I’m saved by the bell/…When the teacher pops a test, I know I’m in a mess/And my dog ate all my homework last night/Riding low in my chair, she won’t know that I’m there/If I can hand it in tomorrow, it’ll be all right/It’s all right, cos I’m saved by the bell."

Sweet mother of God, how did Saved by the Bell make it in here? Well, unfortunately, it started early enough to constitute a mention, and somehow lasted for over a decade. But did you know that the programme was originally a Disney comedy called Good Morning, Miss Bliss, which starred Hayley Mills as a teacher at John F Kennedy High School? When the series was dropped after one season NBC picked it up, changed the name, sacked Hayley Mills and hung on to a few of the kids.

Anyway, this teenage comedy series in its best-known incarnation was set at the fictional Bayside High School on the American west coast, a squeaky clean place with no guns, drugs or violence. There was no graffiti on the lockers, no security guards on the front doors, and no smoking dope in the long-jump pit. The hero was the street-wise joker Zack Morris (Mark-Paul Gosselaar), with highlighted blond hair; he was, presumably sarcastically, nicknamed Preppy by his buddies, who included Slater and Screech. Albert Clifford ‘AC’ Slater (Mario Lopez) was an army brat and the school wrestling champion; with his long, curly hair and tiny vests, which showed off his unnaturally (for a 15 year old) built-up chest, he looked like a porn star in the making. The third amigo was Samuel ‘Screech’ Powers (Dustin Diamond), a curly-haired first-degree geek, who didn’t have a clue about anything, but existed primarily so he could fail and make even Zack look proficient at school. There were a gang of girls, the objects of the boys’ affections, including Zack’s on-off girlfriend, Kelly Kapowski (Tiffani-Amber Thiessen), the red-headed cheer-leading captain. She was friends with Lisa Marie Turtle (Lark Voorhies - what a name!), an ultra-rich black princess, and lanky good-girl, Jessie Spano (Elizabeth Berkley.) Rather ironically, Jessie was a radical feminist, or at least fancied herself as such, but Berkley would go on to star in the Paul Verhoeven sleaze-fest, Showgirls.

Anyway, the gang were constantly riling the Bayside principal, the incompetent and moronic Richard Belding (Dennis Haskins), and getting into all kinds of scrapes which always ended neatly, with a suitable moral or ‘hilarious’ set-piece, inevitably involving Screech. One of the most irritating things about Saved by the Bell was the live studio audience, who were obviously responding to idiot-boards, which directed them to gasp if any character did something morally ambiguous, and “woooo!” if one of the boys, usually Zack, got a bit of ‘action’. We might have been yelling for them to stop the torture, or at least willing the kids to graduate as soon as possible, but there was to be no natural end to Saved by the Bell. As the kids moved on to college, so did the series. Saved by the Bell: The College Years, joined Zack, Slater, Screech and Kelly at the laid-back California university they all attended where the story-lines were just upgraded slightly to accommodate the change of scene. One amusing thing was that Mark-Paul Gosselaar had obviously decided to try and rival Mario Lopez in the muscles stakes, but his attempts at body-building just made him look fat - so the programme makers took away his gym membership. The end of Zack’s story came when he married Kelly in a Las Vegas special - but we all knew it wouldn’t last, considering he was still the same work-shy he was in his freshman year at high school.

Dustin Diamond took his parents to court, claiming that they stole from his earnings while he was a minor, which is perhaps why he felt it necessary to appear in Saved by the Bell: The New Class. Oh yes, back we went to Bayside High, where Principal Belding had hired Screech as his administrative assistant, and was contending with a new set of polished, teenage irritants. To ensure minimal effort on the writers’ part, the story-lines were diligently recycled, and the new kids were personality clones of Zack and his friends, representing the very worst that American TV has to offer us.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 2/10

(Thanks to wikipedia for the borrowed pic)

Saturday Superstore

2006-06-23T14:02:00.000Z

SATURDAY SUPERSTORE
Made by: BBC
Shown on: BBC1
Years shown: 1982-87

This giant of Saturday morning TV had a presenting team who felt like an extended family. Bespectacled Radio 1 DJ Mike Read was like the uncle who knew lots about pop music; John Craven, with his knitted jumpers and sensible haircut, was a bit like your dad on a good day; Sarah Greene was a sexy aunty and Keith Chegwin…well…he was the older brother who was fun for half an hour, but who you then wished would bugger off back to his modern apprenticeship.

Saturday Superstore was a blueprint for its successor, Going Live! - it had a casual, relaxed atmosphere, but at the same time it had a format, and you felt like the presenters were on top of it all, despite the appearance of chaos, sometimes. Hey, even John Craven got to loosen up a bit. There were a multitude of celebrity guests, including the biggest coup of them all - a question and answer session with Margaret Thatcher (who, Chegwin famously later remarked, had hairy legs.) One of the best-remembered features of the show was ‘Search for a Superstar’, which encouraged viewers to write in and nominate themselves, or others, as great singers/dancers/comedians/magicians etc., and then they would appear on the show and would be put to a vote. I can clearly remember a bunch of kids performing ‘Sit Down, You’re Rocking the Boat’ from Guys and Dolls, complete with a rowing boat on the studio floor, in case you were in any doubt. People may also recall a quartet of teachers singing ‘The Laughing Policeman’, while dressed in full uniform, and with a flashing blue light on top of the piano - well, they were from my future middle school, Marden Bridge, and I was still suffering Mr Chapple, Mr Nicholson and Mr Phillips’ rendition of it five years or so later. The emerging winners of the competition might stir a few nasty memories too: they were Claire and Friends, with a sickly song called ‘It’s ‘Orrible Being in Love When You’re Eight and a Half’ (which reached number 13 in 1986.) Gap-toothed Claire was actually nine when the record charted, but I remember the so-called video, where she hung around an older boy while he played conkers, and warbled to him, “I’ve got your picture on my wall/ Got your name upon my scarf”. Excuse me while I undergo hypnosis to remove those lyrics from my brain.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 9/10

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

Rolf's Cartoon Club

2006-06-23T13:53:00.000Z

ROLF'S CARTOON CLUB
Made by: ?
Shown on: ITV
Years shown: 1987-1992

Australian entertainer, Rolf Harris, had already acted as a link between Warner Bros cartoons for Rolf Harris’ Cartoon Time, but eventually he got a permanent slot on ITV. His Cartoon Club was set in what resembled a jazzed-up art classroom, where Rolf would dazzle you with his etchings and teach you about animation, while surrounded by furiously industrious children with sketch pads. He would circulate among them, giving them tips and encouragement - although, surely, he wanted to be frank about some of the more lacklustre efforts. Children at home could also send him pictures to put on display, and he would mark them on his unique map of Britain and Ireland, which he’d drawn to look like himself and a koala (I was, and still am, quite in awe of the ingenuity and creativity of that map.) Kids at home could also join the Cartoon Club and receive the obligatory newsletter, badges and a poster. The main events were, of course, the cartoons themselves, which were usually Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd, Sylvester and Tweety-Pie, or Roadrunner, and Rolf would draw something to give you a clue as to what was coming up. At the end of the show, he would say, “See you on Rolf’s Cartoon Club next week”, which was accompanied by a really irritating hand-jive, or perhaps, in retrospect, it was sign language, which I suppose is permissible, then.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 5/10

(Thanks to www.hhg.org.uk)

Record Breakers

2006-06-23T13:44:00.000Z

RECORD BREAKERS
Made by: BBC
Shown on: BBC
Years shown: 1972-2001

Theme tune: “If you’re the wildest, the mildest, the cleverest child/The strongest, the longest, you’ve never been wrong/The latest, the greatest, then you can say/That you’re a record breaker!”

Roy Castle was Record Breakers, and after his death in September 1993 from lung cancer, it was never the same. A born-entertainer, Castle was upbeat, enthusiastic and clearly passionate about the excellent programme he presented for over 20 years. Record Breakers set out to show children the extremes of human achievement; it travelled around the world to interview people who can only be described as obsessives or lunatics (often Ashrita Furman, who did all kinds of pointless things, like pogo-sticking up the CN Tower, and running backwards while juggling), and also presented over 300 record attempts in the studio itself, usually something like plate-spinning, bubble-blowing or brick-lifting. Roy was assisted by Ross and Norris McWhirter, the twin founders of The Guinness Book of Records, who were utter fact-fiends and could recall to memory anything from the book when needed. Ross McWhirter was tragically killed by the Provisional IRA in the early '80s, but Norris continued alone, appearing for ‘Norris on the Spot’, where he would answer (clearly pre-rehearsed) questions from children in the audience. Roy Castle was certainly no stranger to records himself: at various times, he was part of the largest tap-dancing troupe at BBC Television Centre, became the biggest one-man band, performed the fastest tap dance (an amazing 24 beats per second), wing-walked across the English Channel, appeared atop a 39-man motorbike pyramid, and took part in a 400ft death slide from the top of Blackpool Tower. That deserves some respect.

In the late eighties, Castle was joined by ex-Bucks Fizz singer, Cheryl Baker, and also received reports from America by Ron Reagan Jr (who, after Castle’s death, became a permanent presenter.) Other presenters of the later era include Mark Curry, and former British athletes Kriss Akabusi and Linford Christie - but when it became Linford’s Record Breakers, it was time to switch off.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 8/10

(Thanks to www.tv.cream.org for the borrowed pic)

The Really Wild Show

2006-06-23T13:27:00.000Z

THE REALLY WILD SHOW
Made by: BBC
Shown on: BBC
Years shown: 1985 -present day

When Johnny Morris hung up his zoo-keeper’s uniform, it was time for a new generation of animal-lovers to teach us about the eating habits of the Emperor penguin, and the hunting techniques of the black panther. The Really Wild Show was presented by the balding and ebullient Terry Nutkins (allegedly missing part of a thumb due to an encounter with an otter), Nicola Davies and Chris Packham, who, in the early years, had a ludicrous bleached-blond Mohican haircut. I thought Packham was rather dishy, despite his mild speech impediment, which meant he came out with sentences like, “Look at how the piwana attacks its pwey.”

There were reports by the presenters from different parts of the world (or Chester Zoo), showing you weird and exotic creatures, and they also brought dubious things like snakes and tiger cubs into the studio for the children to pet, and to ask questions about. There were also fact slots with wacky facts about various creatures you’d never heard of, and an opportunity to put the ‘experts’ on the spot about their specialist species. Later on, this developed into a quiz, where the presenters were positioned at the top of a slide which led to a vat of BBC gunge, and if they failed to answer the questions correctly, they were submerged. Actually, this tended to happen even when they were right. Michaela Strachan (formerly of the Wide-Awake Club) joined Terry and Chris in the early nineties, and enjoyed flirtatious banter with a now sensible-haired Packham, before he and Nutkins left and there was no longer any reason to watch. The major accomplishment of The Really Wild Show has to be that it made natural history and environmental issues interesting for those without Friends of the Earth membership or a season ticket to London Zoo - it was watchable, fast-paced, and you felt that you weren’t being short-changed because the presenters really did know what they were talking about.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 7/10

(Thanks to www.worldofowls.com for the borrowed pic)

Rainbow Brite and the Color Kids

2006-06-23T13:18:00.000Z

RAINBOW BRITE AND THE COLOR KIDS
Made by: DiC Entertainment/Starry Night Productions
Shown on: ITV
Years shown: early-mid 80s

If you are the kind of person who is easily nauseated, it is advisable that you skip this and move straight on to The Really Wild Show. Rainbow Brite was a cross between The Care Bears and The Flower Fairies, and it was execrably and unequivocally awful. Also, in a worrying trend among American cartoons, it was based on a series of Hallmark greetings cards. The story was that a girl called Wisp stumbles across a place called Rainbowland, and decides she wants to save it from The Dark One, who has turned it into a dark, gloomy, colourless place. She is given the task of finding the Color Belt and the Sphere of Light, and while on her crusade she befriends a sprite called Twink, and a pony called Starlite, who she rescues from imprisonment in ice. Wisp also finds a baby, who, as luck would have it, turns out to be the sought after Sphere of Light. With me so far? Anyway, she somehow hears the pleas of the Color Kids, who have been banished to the far reaches of the world, and sets out to rescue them. Once they are released, she squares up to the Dark One. Her mission complete, the Color Kids give her the name Rainbow Brite - they each represent a colour of the rainbow, and are responsible for allocating everything in the world the right colours, while she wears multi-colours and has supreme rule over them all. She also had some sickening pets called Puppy Brite and Kitty Brite. Ho hum. The kids were: self-styled romeo, Red Butler; Lala Orange, who fancies Red; basin-haired Canary Yellow; Patty O’Green, whose pants were visible under her dress; macho jock, Buddy Blue; pretentious and artistic Indigo; and introverted Shy Violet, who looked like someone’s granny. Each of the kids had their own fuzzy sprite too, who they got to do all the dirty-work, mining the Color Crystals in the Color Caves; their names were Romeo, OJ, Spark, Lucky, Camp, Hammy and IQ. Rainbow Brite’s sprite, Twink, was white because he was once thrown into the Pits (should have felt at home there, considering the general standard of the cartoon), and had all the colour drained from him. Ha ha.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t end there. The resident bad guy was Murky Dismal, a squat, grey little man with a temper; and his sidekick was Lurky Dismal, a brown, furry thing with a big nose and red trainers, who was extremely dim and gullible. Mrs Dismal, Murky’s matronly, handbag-toting mother, also appeared from time to time. The Dismals all worked for the Evil Princess, who wore black spandex and had a shock of hair like Bonnie Tyler’s, only pillar-box red; she loved jewels, and her purpose was to gain control of the planet Spectra, which was covered in diamonds. Her domain was guarded by Count Blogg, a corpulent, green-hued man with an outlandishly-shaped white beard and an orange robe. Somewhere in this corrupt hierarchy was Sergeant Zombo, the knight who ran the prison planet.

Okay, I can see the end in sight. Among the marginal characters who cropped up now and again were Stormy, a stroppy girl who controlled the storms with her horse Skydancer, and would help out the Color Kids; Moonglo, a girl who brightens the night sky, and owns a Nite Sprite; Tinkled Pink, who just seemed to love pink; Krys, a sexist space-cowboy type, who loves himself, and rides an electric horse called On-X; Orin, a sprite from Spectra, who united Krys and the Color Kids; Wajah, a seemingly German-speaking grey alien whose species gain their energy from colour, and who crash-landed in Rainbowland; and Plock, an entrepreneur who initially wanted the Color Caves, but then gave them up for a good cause. Someone pass me a paper bag. Finally, there was Brian, a boy from earth who accidentally ended up in Rainbowland when he walked through a rainbow; Rainbow Brite then gave him a key, so he could return whenever he wanted. I know what I would have done with it…

SQUARE EYES RATING: 1/10

(Thanks to www.lilbb3.tripod.com for the borrowed pic)

Rainbow

2006-06-22T16:12:00.000Z

RAINBOW
Made by: Thames TV
Shown on: ITV
Years shown: 1971-92

Theme tune: "Up above the streets and houses, rainbow climbing high/Everyone can see it smiling all over the sky/Paint the whole world with a rainbow"

Rainbow is one of the longest-running children’s television shows of all time, and it was originally an attempt to emulate the spectacular success of Sesame Street across the pond. Geoffrey Hayes was the presenter who endured more than any man should have to, and he supposedly lived in a house with a bear, a hippopotamus and…well…a Zippy. Bungle was the unfeasibly camp bear (or man-in-a-bear-costume), who liked wearing tutus and prancing around like the drama queen that he was. George the puppet hippo was also lacking in obvious testosterone, and with his pink skin and long, curly eyelashes, he prompted many accusations that he was actually a girl. Then there was Zippy, a yellow loudmouth puppet who, with his zip mouth, looked like some kind of S&M nightmare. Zippy was an incessant talker, which made his zip very handy - he was also known to fart in the bed that he shared, perfectly innocently, with George and Bungle. Delightful. Ray Skelton provided the voices for both George and Zippy, the latter of whom he based on an amalgamation of Margaret Thatcher and Ian Paisley, and he -incredibly - used to do them simultaneously, which often meant arguing with, and interrupting, himself. Enough to make you schizophrenic.

Rainbow also had an infamous musical troupe, called Rod, Jane and Freddy, who were the worst kind of children’s entertainers. When they begun in the early seventies, they were all long-haired and strummed guitars, and looked like they were on The Old Grey Whistle Test, but when the eighties hit, they hit hard. The line-up changed over the years (Sooty’s Matthew Corbett was one of a number of Freddies), but settled eventually with Rod Burton, Jane Tucker and Freddy Marks, who looked as though he had a few burgers before each show. They dressed in dungarees, sung inane songs, and frolicked around in a manner unacceptable even for someone thirty years their junior. They were an embarrassment to watch, even for three year olds. Actually, I always found the whole thing rather juvenile, and felt faintly sorry for Geoffrey, putting up with a trio of ridiculous dummies…not to mention George, Zippy and Bungle.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 3/10

The Raggy Dolls

2006-06-22T16:05:00.000Z

THE RAGGY DOLLS
Made by: HTV
Shown on: ITV
Years shown: 1988 onwards

Theme tune: "Raggy Dolls, Raggy Dolls, dolls like you and me/Raggy Dolls, Raggy Dolls, made imperfectly/So if you’re not at ease with your nobbly knees/And your fingers are all thumbs/Then stand on your two left feet/And join our Raggy Doll chums."

Suffering the same fate as Superted, the Raggy Dolls were what are politely known as factory seconds - in short, someone or something screwed up when they were being made. As a result, they resided in a factory crate (which they returned to in the closing titles) in Mr Grimes’ factory, and clamber out when no-one was watching, in order to participate in daring exploits in the big, wide world. In this idealistic cartoon, narrated by Neil Innes, there were a number of misfit playthings, who were all slightly flawed, but each had skills valuable to the group as a whole, and were therefore loved and valued. You can see what they were getting at here. Anyway, there was Back-to-Front, whose head and feet pointed in the opposite direction to the rest of his body; Claude, whose only fault seemed to be that he was French (understandable, from a British point of view); the dizzy Dotty; Hi-Fi, who wore a massive Walkman and a white vest, in the manner of most eighties roller-skaters; Lucy, the sensible member of the gang; Princess, who was intended to be stunningly beautiful, but ended up looking more like a pre-ball Cinderella; and finally, Sadsack, the melancholy big fella, who looked like a sack of potatoes. The Raggy Dolls were like a British version of The Get-Along Gang, minus about eight tons of saccharine and four kilos of cuteness, which made it bearable after-school fodder.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 6/10

(Thanks to markmasonanimation.co.uk for the borrowed pic)

Ragdolly Anna

2006-06-16T15:50:00.000Z

RAGDOLLY ANNA
Made by: Ragdoll
Shown on: BBC
Years shown: mid 80s

Theme tune: “Ragdolly Anna, fine and brown, standing up and sitting down/Ragdolly Anna, fine and fat, with a bunch of paper roses in her big straw hat.”

This was Anne ‘Teletubbies, Rosie and Jim, Pob, Brum’ Wood’s first project, inspired by the mundane fact that she’d bought her daughter a ragdoll, and it was also based on books by Jean Kenward. The Little Dressmaker (played by Pat Coombs) was lonely; she lived with a white cat and a tailor’s dummy, inventively called Dummy, perhaps the least captivating character to ever appear on TV. But instead of making the courageous move of opening her front door and interacting with other human beings (these were the days before Internet chat-rooms, you understand), the Little Dressmaker took out her box of material off-cuts and made herself a ragdoll. Ragdolly Anna was the sickeningly sweet result, and there followed a number of mind-boggling dull gambols, the sort of thing that your granny thought you should be watching. Hopefully, the Little Dressmaker got bored of her creation and decided Ragdolly Anna would make a better pincushion.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 1/10

The Raccoons

2006-06-16T15:26:00.000Z

THE RACCOONS
Made by: Nelvana Animation
Shown on: ITV
Years shown:1985-1992

Theme tune: "When darkness falls, leaving shadows in the night/Don't be afraid, wipe that fear from your eyes/The desperate love keeps on driving you wrong/Don't be afraid, you're not alone/You can run with us, we've got everything you need/Run with us, we are free/ Co-co-co-come with us/I see passion in your eyes/Run with us"

Considering this cartoon was usually on pre-Wide Awake Club, when only very restless children were out of bed, The Raccoons was actually not a bad way of passing the time while eating your Shreddies. Sometimes it veered into the sickly sentimental, but there were enough laughs and sufficient story-lines to hold the interest until Tommy Boyd came on.

Cyril Sneer was some kind of pink anteater, and he was also an industry tycoon who lived in a mansion in Evergreen Forest - like all good magnates, he was a slave to the green folding stuff. But life would have been easy “if it wasn’t for…The Racoons!” - so who were the pesky varmints? Bert Racoon was the chief protagonist; he was pretty stupid, but had a heart of gold of course, and would do anything to help his friends. His best buddy was, perversely, the wimpish Cederic Sneer, the son of Bert’s great nemesis, who was a perennial disappointment to his father (he had a conscience, for a start.) Bert was a lodger in the house of boring, wholesome married couple, Ralph and Melissa Racoon, who ran a moralising newspaper, The Evergreen Standard, trying to preserve the forest they all lived in. Despite the fact that they were obviously destroying a forest somewhere by their publication of a newspaper.

But they weren’t all racoons, as a matter of fact - there was also gigantic, shaggy dog called Schaeffer, who had a miniature clone of himself in the form of his son, Broo. Somewhere in there, there was Lisa Racoon, Sophie, and Bentley as well. None of them were particularly big or threatening, so you’d have thought that Cyril Sneer would have had no problem with getting hold of some loggers, and selling Evergreen Forest down the river. But for some reason, he shot himself in the foot time and again, by employing three little pigs in matching outfits, who were the most incompetent bunglers imaginable - but presumably came cheap. Sneer was always trying to impress a millionaire alligator who drove around in a limo, and was lacking in a sense of humour - but to no avail. If he’d had any sense, he’d have bought a pack of hunting dogs - they’d have made short work of those racoons.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 6/10

(Thanks to www.toontalents.com for the borrowed pic!)

Professor Lobster

2006-06-16T15:19:00.000Z

PROFESSOR LOBSTER
Made by: ?
Shown by: ITV
Years shown: 1987-8

Theme tune: “There’s a wise old man from the bottom of the sea/He’s come to help both you and me/Professor Lobster!”

Oh, this is a strange one. The professor in question was actually Professor Ken Martin, of the Royal Institute of British Architects, and every show he would drive into the stark studio in a red Mini with pincers on the front. The Professor taught the kids in the studio all about the building trade, how to mix cement correctly, and all kinds of scientific stuff - but why was it necessary that he was from under the sea? Okay, they thought, an architect might not make for an obvious kids’ presenter, but if we put him in ridiculous dungarees, and give him a hand signal a bit like Mork from Ork, then we’ll bring him down to the kids’ level. Genius. But they forgot one thing - that still doesn’t make the building trade at all interesting.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 2/10

(Thanks to www.tapirback.com for the lobster pic)

Postman Pat

2006-06-16T15:09:00.000Z

POSTMAN PAT
Made by: Woodlands Animation
Shown on: BBC
Shown by: 1982 onwards (original series)

Theme tune: “Postman Pat, Postman Pat, Postman Pat and his black and white cat/Early in the morning, just as day is dawning/He picks up all the post-bags in his van…”

A giant of the public sector workforce, Postman Pat began life as a series of books by John Cunliffe, which were adapted for the television by Ivor Wood, and few could have predicted what an household name and international celebrity he would quickly become.

The famous theme was sung by Ken Barrie, who also provided the voices, and Pat would pave the way for other local heroes - and busybodies - like Fireman Sam and Bob the Builder.

Postman Pat was the sole postal employee for the sleepy village of Greendale, located somewhere like the Yorkshire Dales. It was just as well everyone knew and liked him, because he was often side-tracked from his work, and the mail wasn’t always delivered on time or, in fact, at all. He lived at Forge Cottage with his wife, Sarah, their six year old son, Julian and, of course, Jess the cat. Jess would accompany Pat on his rounds in the chunky red van, registration PAT 1 (Royal Mail could have saved a lot of money if they hadn’t allowed low-grade employees to have personalised registration plates.)

First stop was always the post office, run in a pragmatic way by postmistress, Mrs Goggins, where he would collect all the mail to be delivered. The furthest port of call was Intake Farm, home of George Lancaster, a chicken farmer who dressed like a vagrant. If Greendale needed a village idiot, George was your man - he was kind of an outsider because he lived way up on the moors (no wonder Pat never lingered long there) and he was known to pay his bills in eggs from his prize laying hens.

Back in the relative safety of the village, there was Mrs Julia Pottage, and her 6 year old twins, Katy and Tom. Although she was a farmer’s wife, there didn’t appear to be a Mr Pottage any more, although she did employ a shepherd, the ginger-bearded Peter Fogg. Far be it for me to imply anything...

Postman Pat was ahead of its time with its trend portraying in single-parents. There was Mr Pringle, the lone schoolmaster, who had sole charge of his nine year old boy, Charlie - he might have got on well with Dr Sylvia Gilbertson, who lived with her precocious daughter, Sara. Sara was best friends with Lucy Selby, who lived across the road with her dad, PC Selby. Now, being a single man himself, perhaps PC Selby would have appreciated a bit of female company from Miss Rebecca Hubbard…or maybe not. Miss Hubbard was a dyed-in-the-wool spinster, who cycled to choir practice every day, and liked organising village activities - in short, she was too daunting a prospect for any man.

One happy family in Greendale was the Thompsons, who had a farm at Thompson Ground. Alf Thompson, a hardy, moustachioed man, had really fallen on his feet with his attractive wife, Dorothy, and the two of them had a son, 11 year old Bill. Bill, who always wore a yellow mac and had unkempt black hair, was the oldest pupil at Greendale School, and was therefore responsible for collecting the mail from Pat when he passed by the school. He also lent Pat his ice-skates with the intention of making winter deliveries easier - of course, it had no such effect, but they made a whole episode out of it.

Not everyone in Greendale was in the farming industry, as someone had to survive the BSE crisis. Ted Glen was the local handyman (“Leave it to me, leave it to me/I’ll try to fix it up for you as quickly as can be” was his musical promise), and he could turn his hand to any DIY conundrum. It was he who fixed the rusted village well when there was a drought, but why he didn’t do it earlier is anyone’s guess. Sam Waldron was the only character who didn’t actually live in Greendale; he owned a mobile grocer’s shop, and was a bit of spiv in the mould of Dad’s Army’s Private Walker. The Reverand Timms was the kindly, white-haired vicar of the village church, and he had a trite observation for any occasion (“Seek and ye shall find” he helpfully advised Pat, when looking for Katy Pottage’s lost doll.) But he did help Pat on one occasion, when he and Miss Hubbard rang the church bells to guide a lost Pat through the thick fog.

Like most rural communities, there was an ageing population, and Greendale had its fair share of fossils. Granny Dryden was deaf as a post, and never had any batteries in her hearing-aid - she was also adept at knitting itchy vests for the people of the village. Meanwhile, the retired Major Forbes was living at Garner Hall; a model pensioner, Forbes enjoyed cooking, collecting antiques, and rearing a heard of prize milking cows. But he’d probably still take out a shotgun if you wandered on to his land.

Only thirteen episodes of Postman Pat were made initially, but in an almost unique move, another thirteen original shows were made at the end of the nineties. Pat was sent careening into the modern age, which could be observed by a magazine in Mrs Goggins’ post office, which appeared to have Mulder and Scully on the front of it.

But did you know that Pat’s surname is Clifton? Eh? Not many people have access to that kind of privileged information.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 9/10

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

Portland Bill

2006-06-09T14:59:00.000Z

PORTLAND BILL
Made by: Filmfair
Shown on: ITV
Years shown: 1983, plus repeats

Theme tune: “Oh come with me to the rolling sea/While the weather’s calm and still/And we’ll have some fun and laughter/With the adventures of Portland Bill.”

Switch on the radio early in the morning, and somewhere between the weather and the latest on the FTSE 100, there is the shipping forecast, a seemingly random list of names things that are apparently ‘rising slowly’ or ‘moderate’. Someone obviously liked these arcane names so much that they decided to build up an entire scenario for a children’s story around them. Portland Bill was the head lighthouse keeper at Guillemot Rock, and was assisted in his work by Ross and Cromarty, in their cable-knit jumpers and yellow slickers. For much of the time they were stranded together on the island, but used to go to the nearest mainland village, Mcguillycuddy, for provisions, in Bill’s boat, The Puffin. Provisions could be acquired from Edward Stone’s Emporium, run by Eddie Stone, who was also the village postman, policeman, and any other public figure the place was lacking. Other characters included Finisterre, a crofter on the mainland, Fastnet the fisherman, Grandma Tyree and Mrs Lundy, not to mention Inspector Ronaldsway, the lighthouse inspector, who had a boat called Kipper and could always be appeased/bribed with tea and scones. So as not to miss a fantastic opportunity, there was also a dog called Dogger, who belonged to Bill. There is not much further to say about Bill, except that his catchphrase was “By King Neptune!”, and he enjoyed playing the bagpipes at some considerable volume - probably why he confined to an island with only a cheeky youth (Ross), a 60s enthusiast (Cromarty) and a mutt for company.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 4/10

(Thanks to www.criterionpic.com for the borrowed pic)

Pole Position

2006-06-09T14:38:00.000Z

POLE POSITION
Made by: ?
Shown on: BBC
Years shown: 1982-86

Apparently based on an Atari motor-racing game, Pole Position boasted one of the essential components of any eighties cartoon - a guitar-driven power-rock theme, which bawled, “Pole Positioonnnnn!” in an admirable imitation of Def Leppard, or at least Don Henley. The wafer-thin plot involved brother and sister, Dan and Tess, whose parents were killed by an evil cabal. They worked for Pole Position, an implausible FBI-like organisation run by their uncle, Dr Zachary Darret. Their job entailed driving cars called Wheels and Roadie, who had minds of their own, and made smart-arse remarks, suspiciously like KITT in Knight Rider. Somewhere in this bizarre world was Darret’s young daughter Daisy, who in turn had an annoying pet monkey called Kuma. It was a primarily a crime-fighting caper and I thought it was great, but following the point of it all was a skill in its own right - and worryingly, I remember thinking that Dan and Tess were boyfriend and girlfriend, so perhaps this point wasn’t made explicit enough.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 4/10

(Thanks to www.80sanimation.com for the borrowed pic)

Pob's Programme

2006-06-09T14:33:00.000Z

POB'S PROGRAMME
Made by: Ragdoll Productions
Shown on: Channel 4
Years shown: 1985-88

God save us, it’s Pob. This was a creation of Anne Wood, the same woman who ‘blessed’ us with The Teletubbies in 1997, and of course both shows have one thing in common: none of the characters speak properly. This is an old debate between parents, programme-makers and watchdog groups - should kids’ TV characters speak like the children themselves (i.e. an approximation of English, but garbled), or should they speak a real, intelligible language? Whichever way, this was only one annoying aspect of Pob’s Programme. Pob was a cross between Pinocchio, Mr Punch and an alien; he wore a striped pink and yellow knitted jumper, and he had pink hair. Anne Wood dreamed him up while travelling on the London Underground, and seeing a child breathe on the window and write their name in it. Pob went one step further - he spat on the window, which was genuinely quite nasty, and then wrote his name in a laboured way in the resultant ‘flob’. Ugh.

Also playing on the common children’s belief that the characters actually live in the TV set, Pob was supposed to be trapped in the television, and would knock on the screen, which probably freaked out many a child over the years. Pob’s Programme always took place outdoors, often in some woods, and Pob would find great amusement in playing hide-and-seek, and spying on unwitting people. He also used to get his woolly jumper caught in various places, so it would unravel and leave a trail around the place. So, to recap, Pob a) spat b) spat on the TV c) didn’t use the Queen’s English d) hammered on the TV set e) stalked innocent people and f) ruined his clothes, sometimes deliberately - things which any child would find themselves in some serious trouble for. So, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I rest my case - now do you think Pob was a good role-model?

SQUARE EYES RATING: 1/10

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

Playschool

2006-06-08T14:36:00.000Z

PLAYSCHOOL Made by: BBC Shown on: BBC Years shown: 1964-88

"Ready to play? What's the day?!"

When Playschool was replaced with Playbus (Playdays, shortly afterwards), there was outcry from parents around the country, and rightly so. Nobody really wants to witness the termination of a great piece of popular culture, something that they grew up with, and watched day after day with their children as well. The great thing about Playschool was that it understood young children; it knew what kept their attention, what they found fascinating, and what they would be able to learn and understand. And it was fantastic fun too. It was, quite by accident, the first programme broadcast on BBC2 due to a power failure the previous night, which was to have hosted the grand unveiling of the new station.

Every episode was hosted by four presenters, two male and two female, chosen from a wealth and variety of talent. At the risk of sounding twice my age again, presenters of children’s TV today seem to be the product of a cloning project (all under 21, wearing bright trendy clothes, with a shelf-life of about six weeks), whereas Playschool presenters were real adults, and looked as though they could be your uncles and aunts. During the golden age of the show, you could be watching any combination from Johnny Ball, Floella Benjamin, Brian Cant, Carol Chell, Fred Harris, Carol Leader (the dads’ favourite), Derek Griffiths, and Don Spencer (an Australian ex-pat, who strummed a mean guitar, and had also written the theme song to Gerry Anderson’s Fireball XL5.)

There was a reassuring set pattern to Playschool. The presenters would begin by saying hello to the children watching, then they would see what was under the clock - whatever object was there would denote the theme of that particular show. Then there would be a make-and-do activity, where you always had to get a grown-up to help you with the scissors, followed by a song and energetic dance routine. The focus would then return to the clock because it was time for a lesson in telling the time (“the big hand is pointing to the twelve, so it is something o’clock”), but once you’d survived that brief educational bit, it was time to watch a video through either the round, square or arch window. The video was usually of a crayon-making factory, or a trip around a farm - a bit like a school trip really, but without the permission slips and packed lunches. Afterwards, there was pets corner, a veritable menagerie of long-suffering animals: there were Bit and Bot the goldfish (the least interesting, obviously), Buffy the rabbit, Lizzie the guinea pig, and K’Too the cockatoo, who was quite exotic to the average British child, and who bit Johnny Ball and made him swear on camera as a consequence.

The presenters had already broken the time-honoured rule about not working with children or animals, but they were a breeze compared to the Playschool toys. Surely there wasn’t a single child out there who coveted these slightly mildewed playthings? There was Jemima the rosy-cheeked rag-doll, described by Fred Harris as “an empty-headed bimbette”; Hamble, a very scary porcelain doll who looked vaguely Eskimo, and who used to be drop-kicked around the studio between filming; Humpty, a big, green, rotund thing in tartan trousers; and Big Ted and Little Ted, who just looked a bit morose. The original Big Ted was actually stolen and replaced with an impostor, which probably accounted for why Little Ted always looked quietly alarmed. Hamble, too, did not go the full course; she had always caused problems because she refused to sit up straight, necessitating Chloe Ashcroft to stick a knitting-needle up her backside to improve her posture, and in the PC 80s the satanic one was replaced by Poppy, a black doll.

The dolls may have been inanimate, but they weren’t very professional in their attitude; when Humpty plummeted off the seat for the fiftieth time, Johnny Ball memorably said, “It’s all right, he doesn’t get hurt. In fact, he quite enjoys it”; and when the whole lot of them refused to co-operate on camera, an exasperate Fred Harris yelled, “I can’t work with these amateurs!” The slightly manic Harris was a bit frightening at the best of times, but if that outburst had gone out on air, a nation of under-fives would have dissolved instantly into tears, in sympathy with the lovely toys.

And here, especially for all you nursery pop-pickers, is the all-time top ten songs in the Playschool Hit Parade:

1) Little Ted Bear (“from nowhere in particular”)

2) Well, Jemima, Let’s Go Shopping (“Are we walking? No, we’re hopping..”)

3) Follow the Bangalorey Man

4) Sing a Song of Mrs Twisty

5) Brush, Brush, Brush (“you mustn’t rush, rush, rush, when you clean your teeth in the morning…”)

6) Build it Up (“build it up, build it high..”)

7) Ride a Cock Horse (“to Banbury Cross, to see a fine lady ride on a white horse”)

8) How Do You Feel Today?

9) I Think I’ve Caught a Cold

10) Two By Two

SQUARE EYES RATING: 10/10

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

Play Away

2006-06-08T14:30:00.000Z

PLAY AWAY
Made by: BBC
Shown on: BBC
Years shown: 1971-1984

Play Away was essentially a spin-off of Playschool (see above), the premier entertainment programme for the discerning pre-schooler, and it focused almost entirely on singing and dancing routines. It was play-group for those who didn’t actually go to play-group. The presenters were mainly recruited from the parent show, Playschool, including Brian Cant and Carol Chell, and Jonathan Cohen was always there on the piano, leading the Play Away Players. A lot of the presenters, like Rick Jones, were actually classically-trained actors, and were more used to the Bard than ‘The Wheels on the Bus’. One such thespian was future Oscar winner Jeremy Irons, who made a number of appearances in the mid 1970s, as well as Julie Covington of 'Don't Cry For Me, Argentina' fame and Baldrick himself, Tony Robinson.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 5/10

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

Pinny's House

2006-06-08T14:21:00.000Z

PINNY'S HOUSE
Made by: Smallfilms/Barn Productions
Shown on: BBC
Years shown: 1986

Narrated by Matilda Thorpe, this fairly dull series about two pin-sized dolls who lived on a mantelpiece was, sadly, the final collaboration between Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin. And also sadly, I can’t remember a thing about it.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 3/10

(Thanks to www.smallfilms.co.uk for the borrowed image)

Pigeon Street

2006-06-08T14:12:00.000Z

PIGEON STREET
Made by: David Yates
Shown on: BBC
Years shown: 1982 onwards

Theme tune: “If you lived in Pigeon Street/Here are the people you could meet/Here are the people who would say hello, goodbye, hello, goodbye/Every day…”

Pigeon Street, narrated by George Layton, was one of the giants of children’s TV in the 1980s - even though there were very few pigeons to be seen. The residents of Pigeon Street were not your average neighbourhood, which probably won’t come as a great surprise. The person everyone remembers is Long Distance Clara, the long-haul truck driver with her own catchy song - she was ever so slightly sexy too, and her lucky husband was Hugo the Chef, who stayed at home in a very modern role-reversal. There was also Dr Glossop, bald as a coot, who lived with his wife and their son Gerald, and twin daughters Molly and Polly, with their lettered jumpers. The twins also had a memorable song and I’m going to have to recount it for you: “Molly and Polly are two of a kind/They look both the same when they’re seen from behind/But when they turn round, it’s easy to see/It’s Molly with an M, and Polly with a P”. Thank you, I’m here every Thursday.

Anyway, moving swiftly on, there was also Mr McAdoo, the pet shop owner, who always had a pencil behind his ear; Rose and Daisy, the dotty old women who liked keep-fit; Reg the park-keeper and his wife Doreen, who were keen on ballroom dancing; and Bob, the bike-shop owner, who looked like he might have been at Woodstock. Of course, there was the token black family, made up of William the window-cleaner, his wife Betty, and their adolescent son, Jim. Finally, there was a pair of elderly madmen called Mr Jupiter and Mr Baskerville. If you can’t deduce their hobbies from their names, Mr Jupiter was an amateur astronomer with a telescope and a dog called Flash, and according to the song “looks high” (mmm..); whereas, Mr Baskerville was an amateur sleuth with a magnifying glass and a dog called Watson, and he was inclined to “look low.” They were not, however, as those misleading lyric excerpts might suggest, a drug addict and a manic-depressive.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 8/10

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

Pie in the Sky

2006-06-06T16:25:00.000Z

PIE IN THE SKY
Made by: BBC
Shown on: BBC1
Years shown: mid 80s

This was a bit of an oddity for pre-school children, and goodness only knows how it was dreamt up. Iain Lachlan (of Fingermouse fame) was the Pieman, who made pies for the children of his village - but before he handed them over, he called upon some kind of spaceman (Playschool’s Ben Thomas) to fill the pies with a song. Cue lots of slightly fatiguing sing-a-longs. The Pieman had a Piewife too (played by Chloe Ashcroft) which doesn’t sound like much of a career for any modern woman, being determined by your husband’s job title.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 3/10

Penny Crayon

2006-06-06T16:18:00.000Z

PENNY CRAYON
Made by: Peter Maddocks
Shown on: BBC
Years shown: 1990 onwards

Theme tune: "Penny Crayon can draw anything she wishes/From cats and dogs and butterflies/To plates of chips and fishes..."

Penny Crayon was a kilt-wearing cartoon girl, voiced by Hi-de-Hi’s Su Pollard, who was a whiz with an HB. Basically, whatever she drew came to life, which could be extremely useful, but usually caused more trouble than it was worth. She dragged her slow-witted friend, David (voiced by Peter Hawkins), along for the ride, and he usually bore the brunt of any disasters. Penny usually ended up chasing after her creations with a giant eraser, but this didn’t mean she’d learned her lesson by the next episode.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 5/10

Parallel 9

2006-06-06T16:03:00.000Z

PARALLEL 9
Made by: BBC
Shown on: BBC1 & BBC2
Years shown: 1992-4

Oh, when will it all end? Whenever Going Live! wasn’t on the air, BBC1 found it necessary to try and do something off-the-wall and a bit zany with the weeks left between series. Parallel 9, fundamentally no different from any other Saturday morning shows, was supposedly broadcast from the dimension Parallel 9 (the set looked a bit like an updated Blake’s 7) by Mercator, an ancient alien traveller and pseudo-Dr Who, who had been banished there from his own planet because of his forbidden thirst for knowledge. Unfortunately, it is an accepted fact that no-one learns anything from Saturday morning TV. Anyway, Mercator was only allowed to awake for two hours, conveniently 9-11am on a Saturday, when he could ‘beam up’ guests and try and learn from them. He was joined by Calendular, ostensibly an earth girl, who he seemed to be keeping on Parallel 9 against her will; also ‘doing time’ there were Steyl, Skyn and Thynkso, apparently criminals of some kind, who were constantly trying to escape (can’t really blame them.)

There were the usual competitions, where children could win the entirely useless Parallel 9 backwards watch (time goes backwards there, apparently), and there was also a computer game slot, where two kids would compete on a new game, and review it at the same time. Cartoons were there to fill in the time as well, including the dreadful Toxic Crusaders. No-one can have possibly transgressed as badly as Mercator was supposed to have done - surely his planet would have had mercy if they’d witnessed this below-par show?

It was all-change for series two, which probably upset the purists, if such people existed. There was a new, younger Mercator, who was a failed commander, and he was accompanied by Zee, a girl with a nasty ginger bob, Dr Kovan, and a dinosaur called Brian, who was allegedly from Rotherham. Brian later acquired a little brother called Derrick, who hatched from an egg, and liked to make farting noises - as you can see, the tone they were aiming for was really high. They had a new, garish set, and also a base on earth, which was basically an old caravan. The earth ‘correspondent’ was Richard Norton (Ryan in Neighbours, and later in Home and Away too), followed by Lucinda Cowden (formerly helium-voiced Melanie from Neighbours), and they beamed the guests up to Parallel 9 from the shower cubicle in the caravan, usually fellow soap stars or teeny-pop acts. They also presented Parallel 9 Pinball, an interactive game for children at home, which you could supposedly operate using your phone keypad, but it was temperamental to say the least.

Another revamp took place for the third, and final, series, where only Dr Kovan and the dinosaur puppets survived the cull. There was yet another Mercator, now quite bolshy, to whom Parallel 9 seemed to be more of a research facility than the slammer; and his new assistant was Flynn, an objectionable girl with bottle-blonde hair. I strongly suspect that by this time Mercator was desperately trying to devise some way to blow the whole planet to kingdom come and save us all from a fourth series, which was extremely selfless.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 1/10

(Thanks to www.its-behind-you.com for the borrowed pic)

Paddington

2006-06-05T15:05:00.000Z

PADDINGTON
Made by: Filmfair
Shown on: BBC
Years Shown: mid 70s-early 90s

Adapted from the popular books by Michael Bond, Paddington utilised an animation technique never seen before or since; the main character, the bear himself, was a stop-motion model, while all of the other characters, as well as all the background scenery, were hand-drawn animation. Amazingly, it worked.

Paddington was a bear from Darkest Peru, who was named after the station on whose platform he was found by the Brown family. He was wearing his trademark blue duffel-coat and red hat, with a note attached to him that read, ‘Please look after this bear.’ Mr Henry Brown, his wife, and their children, Jonathan and Judy, took Paddington home and essentially adopted him. They were not in the least surprised to find a talking bear who wore human clothes. Anyway, Paddington’s Aunt Lucy was now in a home for retired bears back in Darkest Peru, and he needed somewhere to live (how he ended up thousands of miles away is never explained - was this a deliberate ploy by his aunt?)

The Browns lived at 32 Windsor Gardens, along with their housekeeper, Mrs Bird ; next door was their nasty neighbour, Mr Curry, who had no time for the Grizzly house-guest; and there was also Mr Gruber, the local antiques dealer, who was a little more tolerant, and would take Paddington and the Brown children on trips to the seaside etc.

Paddington was famous for a couple of things: his love of marmalade sandwiches, and his ability to give people hard stares. He was not, however, famed for his intellect - in fact, he wasn’t quite the full shilling much of the time (he kept his sarnies in his hat, for instance), which led to all kinds of mishaps and misunderstanding. But Paddington always meant well, and usually he got things right by happy accident. He was also lucky that the Browns didn’t find him at Wapping or Embankment.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 7/10

Number 73

2006-06-05T14:51:00.000Z

NUMBER 73
Made by: TVS
Shown on: ITV
Years shown: 1982-88

In an effort to show the usual Saturday morning cartoons, guest bands, competitions and educational bits in a slightly different format, ITV came up with Number 73, which mixed all the old guff with a kind of soap opera. Ethel (Sandi Toksvig) was the landlady, living in Maidstone, ME15 6RS (or “me fifteen, six arse”, which is obviously riotously entertaining), and presideed over her ‘family’ of young boarders. There was Harry Stern (Nick Staverson), a mulleted fashion-victim, who thought he was pretty cool, but was actually very dense; equally carefully-coiffed was Neil (Neil Buchanan), a struggling artist, who was clearly never going to make it. For a while, Neil was going out with Kim (Kim Goody), who was friends with roller-skating cockney, Dawn (Andrea Arnold.) Dawn was a vegetarian and all-round animal lover, who worked as an assistant to a vet, and frankly was the only one who wasn’t going to end up dossing around for the rest of her life. The neighbours of the folks at Number 73 were Martin Edwards, who was always starting up some kind of feud, and his more sympathetic wife, Hazel.

Number 73 was a bit like watching a drama class rehearse; the script was developed through a combination of intense rehearsals and a fair bit of improvisation. But, in its own way, it was groundbreaking, because it was live drama, with no room for mistakes during the broadcast. It proved popular, but the makers felt it necessary to reinvent the show later on as 7T3, to remain ‘hip with the kids’, and was minus a few cast members. Neil Buchanan has made it as an artist in a sense, as he continues to wield the tubes of paint on ITV’s long-running Art Attack; but most of the rest of the young cast have disappeared into obscurity, including Kim Goody, who briefly tried to launch a pop career - and failed to chart.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 2/10

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

Noggin the Nog

2006-06-05T14:42:00.000Z

NOGGIN THE NOG
Made by: Smallfilms
Shown on: ?
Years shown: 1960 (plus repeats)

“In the lands of the North, where the black rocks stand guard against the cold sea, in the dark night that is very long, the men of the Northlands sit by their great log fires and they tell a tale…”

...Thus begun every episode of Noggin the Nog, and how many programmes set such an evocative scene for its audience? You could just as easily be in the bleak, stark surroundings of an Ibsen or Strindberg play, somewhere in the vast wastes of Scandinavia. The subject of these old Norse tales was Noggin (whose name Peter Firmin thought up on the Tube on his way to work), the youthful Viking-like king, who defended his lands from his evil uncle, Nogbad the Bad (identifiable by his malevolent moustache), who wanted to reclaim the crown. Noggin is married to the raven-haired beauty, Nooka, who was the daughter of Nan of the Nooks. Nooka was a good woman, more intelligent than her nice-but-dim-witted husband, and she could also be very feisty when Nogbad threatened her family, and in particular, Knut, her son with Noggin. There were a lot of loyal Nogs, including Olaf the Lofty, the rubbish court inventor, and Thor Nogson, Captain of the Royal Guard, with his big blond beard. The Tolkien influences became even more apparent with Graculus, a gigantic green bird, who, with his wisdom and common-sense, acted as Noggin’s counsellor - and gave him a lift when he needed it.

Noggin was animated in the same style as Ivor the Engine, with expressive line-drawings and good old-fashioned story telling. There was always something dark and ephemeral

looming over the landscape of Nogland, but it was countered by the Nogs’ touching emphasis on family values, and their sense of community. Perhaps Tony Blair models himself on the King of the Nogs…

SQUARE EYES RATING: 6/10

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

The Mysterious Cities of Gold

2006-05-26T14:54:00.000Z

THE MYSTERIOUS CITIES OF GOLD
Made by: BRB International
Shown on: BBC1
Years shown: mid 80s

Theme tune: “Children of the sun, someday soon you’re gonna see/That your destiny holds the secret, holds the key…”

If you thought Tolstoy indulged in complex and sprawling sagas, here was a children’s cartoon which came a close second. The Mysterious Cities of Gold spanned an incredible 39 episodes, as it followed the exploits of young Esteban, an explorer’s son, on his travels through South America in search of his father. Esteban was known as a Child of the Sun, which meant that he was able to exercise some power and control over the fiery orb. He met Zia, a young Inca girl who was also looking for her dad, and they discovered that they both own similar necklaces - in fact, the necklaces were two halves of a whole, and when fitted together they formed the key to Eldorado, the lost Cities of Gold. Along for the ride with them was Tau, a boy who was also descended from Inca people, and his parrot, whose chief purpose was to provide comic relief.

Of course, where there’s gold, there are gold-diggers, namely the Spanish explorers, who Esteban was travelling with. Mendoza is Esteban’s kindly guardian, but there were those who are not so honourable - Commander Gomez, Gaspard, and his two brain-dead henchmen, Sancho (not Panza) and Pedro.

The Mysterious Cities of Gold, with its poor-quality English dubbing, was a big hit when shown on Children’s BBC, proving that children do in fact have good attention spans, but are simply choosy about what they use it on. The episodes were genuinely engaging, and I could never wait for the next one - I was absolutely desperate for them to find the gold. Philip Schofield was so taken by it that he had lyric-sheets printed up so children could write in for them and sing along to the theme at home. I didn’t go so far as to write in for one, I’m sorry to say.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 9/10

(Thanks to www.retrojunk.com for the borrowed pic)

The Muppets

2006-05-26T14:43:00.000Z

THE MUPPETS
Made by: Jim Henson Productions/ATV
Shown on: ?
Years shown: 1976-9, plus repeats

Theme tune: “It’s time to put on music, it’s time to light the lights/It’s time to get things started on The Muppet Show tonight!”

His creations on Sesame Street had been educating the pre-school American masses for seven whole years, before puppet-maestro Jim Henson unleashed The Muppets on a prime-time audience, to enormous critical and popular acclaim. The basic premise was a group of characters trying to put together a weekly theatre show, with the usual pressure of time, problems with temperamental divas, and comedians who fail to be funny - except that these characters were all puppets, of course. Still, The Muppets provided us with perhaps one of the greatest ensemble casts of all time. It was clever, it was subversive, but mainly it was just unabashed entertainment.

Kermit the Frog was the show’s perennially harassed producer and emcee, constantly trying to fend off the amorous attentions of Miss Piggy, the self-obsessed diva who was also the show’s main star. Miss Piggy, in turn, was relentlessly pursued by Gonzo, a blue, hook-nosed weirdo with a vast range of bizarre stage acts, including eating rubber tyres. Also causing headaches for Kermit was Fozzie Bear, a really crap stand-up comedian, with an endless line in lame puns, and the immortal trademark laugh, “Wocka, wocka, wocka!”

The show also featured a couple of long-running ‘drama’ series. Piano-playing dog Rowlf starred in the soap Animal Hospital (with not a Rowlf Harris in sight, heh heh), but the big draw was Pigs in Space, an inspired Star Trek ‘homage’. The Swinetrek was captained by the egomaniacal Link Hogthrob, with Dr Julius T. Strangepork as his Spok-like sidekick, and Miss Piggy as the swooning love-interest. Inevitably, a battle of the egos ensued.

Music on the night was provided by the multifarious members of Dr Teeth and The Electric Mayhem: Teeth himself played a funky piano, with Floyd Pepper on bass guitar, Zoot on the saxophone, Janice on lead guitar duties, and, doing his best Keith Moon impersonation, was the insuppressible drummer, Animal, a living embodiment of rock ‘n’ roll.

There was a cookery slot with the incomprehensible Swedish Chef, who was essentially a one-gag act (i.e. laughing at unintelligible foreigners); and over in the science corner was Dr Bunsen Honeydew (memorable for having glasses, but no eyes), and his fraught victim of an assistant, Beaker. Explosions and trips to the ER were routine.

Another brilliant addition was Sam the Eagle, a patriot of the highest order, who was very easily offended, and whose catch-phrase was, “Stop doing that, it’s un-American!” He was a great play on television censorship, and tried to patrol everyone’s behaviour, to little effect. Then there were the unforgettable Statler and Waldorf, the two cantankerous old men sitting in the balcony, heckling the show, who were like a Vaudeville act on their own.

The Muppet Show was absolutely crammed with characters, and even the small ones were perfectly formed. There was Rizzo the Rat; Kermit’s nephew Robin (who had a top ten hit in May 1977 with the tear-jerker ‘Halfway Down the Stairs’); security guard and food-obsessive, Bobo the Bear; Miss Piggy’s nephews, Andy and Randy; Scooter, the much put-upon gofer for the show; the intentionally over-cute Bean Bunny; Johnny Fiamma and Sal, a smooth Frank Sinatra-esque crooner, with his bodyguard monkey; Seymour and Pepe (loosely an elephant and a rooster), the bellhops who were desperate to break into showbiz; and, finally, Sweetums, a gigantic hairy beast who lolloped around in an ungainly manner, and took care of Robin.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 9/10

(Thanks to www.thegreatcurve.net for the borrowed pic)

Muppet Babies

2006-05-26T14:30:00.000Z

MUPPET BABIES
Made by: Jim Henson Productions
Shown on: BBC1
Years shown: lates 80s-mid 90s

Theme tune: “Muppet babies, will do anything for you/Muppet babies will make your dreams come true…I like adventure! (Kermit)/I like romance! (Piggy)/I love great jokes! (Fozzie)/Animal dance! (Animal)/I’ve got my computer! (Scooter)/I swing through the air! (Skeeter)/I play the piano! (Rowlf)/And I’ve got blue hair - Wa! (Gonzo)/Me, I invent things (Bunsen)/Meep meep meep meeeep!! (Beaker)/Is everyone all right in here? (Nanny)/YES, NANNY! (all)…”

Very few people who consider themselves to be television connoisseurs would debate that The Muppets was a creation of comic brilliance, and since then, only The Simpsons can really challenge it for across-the-board appeal, and consistently ingenious creations. But, considering its critical success, who on earth allowed this to be commissioned? The Muppet Babies was a cartoon which followed the small-scale adventures of all the regular Muppets’ characters, when they were infants living in a nursery together. It had an maddeningly catchy theme (see above; but you cannot possibly appreciate the effect it had unless you actually hear the original), and was drippy and insipid in the extreme. A junior Kermit the Frog, dressed in a sailor suit, would lead his pals into all kinds of crazy capers, which would always turn out to be the products of the kids’ vivid imaginations, having all taken place on a much smaller scale in their nursery. Piggy was, of course, in love with poor Kermit; Fozzie was a bad comedian-in-training; Animal was crazed and incomprehensible; precocious Scooter was surfing the information super-highway; Skeeter was putting some early stunt-training to the test; Rowlf the dog was becoming a piano virtuoso; Gonzo’s love for Piggy was unrequited and unwanted; Bunsen was diligently inventing things with his alarmingly elaborate chemistry set; and Beaker? Well, Beaker was always anxious, and probably with good reason: the Nanny who looked after them all seemed to consist only of a pair of legs with the hem of a skirt.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 3/10

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

Mr Benn

2006-05-24T12:31:00.000Z

MR BENN
Made by: Zephyr Films
Shown on: BBC
Years shown: 1971 onwards

Whenever you discuss vintage children’s television with a group of people, somebody always thinks it’s big and clever that they remember Mr Benn. David McKee made only thirteen episodes of this little gem, but the face of kids’ TV would be very drab without this dapper, quintessentially British, adventurer. As everyone knows, Mr Benn lived at 52 Festive Road (based on McKee’s home on Festing Road); he dressed as though he was heading for a job in the city, but instead, he made his way to a costume-hire shop. This little shop was chock-a-block with weird and wonderful outfits and, “as if by magic”, the shopkeeper appeared, to help Mr Benn decide what he would like to try on. Whenever he emerged from the dressing room in his new costume, he found himself in a world which corresponded to it - for instance, when he wore his suit of armour, he found himself in medieval times, with a dragon to engage in battle. During his jaunts, Mr Benn became - deep breath - a Red Knight, a hunter, a cook, a caveman, a balloonist, a zoo keeper, a diver, a wizard, a cowboy, a clown, an Arabian Knight, a spaceman, and a pirate. But the great thing was that he didn’t have to pay for any of it! The shopkeeper, a strange man with a fez and a dubious moustache, never charged Mr Benn for trying on the costumes and entering these magical lands - which is just as well, as Mr Benn plainly didn’t go to work and therefore couldn’t afford it. Unless he had a private income. To add to this, Mr Benn always took home a keepsake from his exploit, such as a hat, but no money ever exchanged hands - which is part of why Mr Benn has such an enchanting, mystical charm.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 10/10

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

Motormouth

2006-05-24T12:23:00.000Z

MOTORMOUTH
Made by: ?
Shown on: ITV
Years shown: 1988-92

This was another show in the long line of attempts that ITV made to steal BBC1’s Saturday morning thunder - and, once again, it was unsuccessful. Motormouth was hosted by presenters who were basically rejects from other kids’ shows, when either they or the programme had lost their appeal. There were Andrea Arnold and Neil Buchanan, both from Number 73, and, later, Andy Crane from children’s BBC’s broom cupboard; plus Terry Wogan’s favourite, Gaby Roslin, and Tony Gregory. There’s really not a lot to say about Motormouth, except that it was loud and fast-moving, which ITV bosses in the eighties obviously thought would win them the hyper-active vote from the more staid SaturdaySuperstore and Going Live! One memorable aspect (by memorable, don’t automatically read ‘good’) was Mousetrap!, the board game which was played on a life-sized board, where contestants added pieces to the puzzle, and were then usually trapped at the end by their own making. Sandi Toksvig (also of Number 73) cropped up in Spin Off, a spoof soap supposedly based in the production offices of Motormouth, which also starred Joe Greco, Roger Sloman, Pippa Michaels and Richard Waites - little did she know that she only had years of Call My Bluff ahead of her….

SQUARE EYES RATING: 2/10

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

The Movie Game

2006-05-24T12:04:00.000Z

THE MOVIE GAME
Made by: BBC
Shown on: BBC1
Years shown: mid 80s to mid 90s

Philip Schofield was hot property when he took the reigns of this film-themed children’s quiz show. The board on which the game was played was a length of film reel, and according to the squares they landed on, the teams had to answer film questions or take on one of the challenges. The challenges usually involved the kids dressing up in silly costumes, and - thanks to the ‘magic of television’ - riding a stagecoach, sailing on a magic carpet or driving a racing car, while simultaneously trying to throw as many beanbags into a chute as possible. The winning team was the one who reached the end of the reel first, and they were presented with an Oscar-like trophy to treasure, along with the usual Movie Game keyrings, pens etc. For a children’s game show, it was actually fairly original, and it bucked the trend of the time, by keeping gunge and slime to a minimum; but it lost momentum when Schofield was replaced as host by Jonathan Morris (of the sitcom, Bread), who, incidentally, followed in Pip’s footsteps again, when he took on the technicoloured mantel of Joseph in the Lloyd-Webber/Rice stage show. Spooky. The series final was always quite entertaining, mainly because about 8 different teams had to crowd themselves onto the board - much mirth to be had when they landed on the same square and someone inevitably ended up on the floor.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 7/10

(Thanks to www.ukgameshows.com for the borrowed pic)

Mike and Angelo

2006-05-18T12:30:00.000Z

MIKE AND ANGELO
Made by: Thames
Shown on: ITV
Years shown: 1989-98

One of television’s greatest mysteries has to be how Mike and Angelo kept being given the green light for another new series. Conceived and written by Lee Pressman and Grant Cathro (see also The Amazing Adventures of T-Bag and Spatz), this kids’ comedy show started off harmlessly enough, with American writer Rita King (Shelley Thompson) divorcing her husband, Tony, and moving herself and her young son, Mike, to a ramshackle old house in the Home Counties.

Mike is not pleased with this change of scene, until he opens the old wardrobe in his room and discovers Angelo, a humanoid who fled from his planet when it began to self-destruct. Of course, Mike has to introduce his alien buddy to his aghast mom, but when she adapts to the idea of a lodger, it all becomes a bit like Mork & Mindy (minus the romance aspect between the leads, of course.) During the first few years, Mike was played by Matt Wright, who I thought was rather cute when I was ten, and the agreeable Tyler Butterworth was in the role of zany, trouble-making Angelo. But it was all change when Mike returned to the USA after the third series; and when his character returned, he was replaced by not-so-cute Michael Benz, who was clearly a good few years younger; and what’s more, Tim Whitnall (now totally bald, btw) took on the guise of Angelo.

Because Mike and Angelo went on for so long, toothy Michael Benz also outgrew the role, and Steven Geller was brought in as the new Mike, but the series was a limping dog by this stage, and the only humane thing would have been to shoot it on the spot. The problem with Mike and Angelo, aside from the irritating canned laughter, was that I suspect the writers came up with the neat title first, and then thought about what they might do with it. The initial premise was not a bad one, but how many low-grade adventures can a boy and his alien have?

SQUARE EYES RATING: 4/10

Masterteam

2006-05-18T12:26:00.000Z

MASTERTEAM
Made by: BBC
Shown on: BBC
Years shown: 1984-6

It took me a long time to remember what this quiz was called, which is probably down to the fact that the title was somewhat of a misnomer. This was basically a pub quiz on TV, hosted by Angela Rippon rather than the publican’s wife, and the teams all had rubbish names, like Blyth Battlers, or West Hastings Bowls Club. Angela Rippon always seemed a bit refined for this sort of malarkey, and looked slightly on edge while she tried to hold the fort.

The first round was the Team Challenge, which was a quick-fire round, intended as a team effort. This was followed by Spotlight, where the team would choose a member of the opposition (who they thought was a dunce) to answer a question from a selection of subject categories, including history, sport, and the bewildering ‘pot pourri’ which was, according to Angela, “a tough general knowledge round.” This still meant nothing to a five year old. Once they’d survived this, there was In A Spin, where the teams were given 3 randomly selected letters, and had to come up with the longest word, using the letters in the order they appeared (eg. if it was C, V and L, you could have ‘Conversational’) This was a bit much for the average pub-quizzer. Finally, there was It’s All Yours, another question round but this time it was fingers-on-the-buzzers, and - ooh! - there was no conferring allowed.

For completists out there, the winning teams from the three series were Warrington Sports Club, Antrim Coasters, and Carrick Plus One (who sound like an eighties pop combo.) But in the end, this poor-quality imitation of one of the great British pursuits was axed in favour of another old favourite, Neighbours, which is still in the same slot to this day, making the chances of a Masterteam comeback fairly remote.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 5/10
(Thanks to www.ukgameshows.com for the borrowed pic)

Maid Marian and Her Merry Men

2006-05-18T12:21:00.000Z

MAID MARIAN AND HER MERRY MEN
Made by: BBC
Shown on: BBC1
Years shown: 1989-94

Theme tune: “Why don’t you carry on with what you’re doing/Cos there’s always trouble brewing/You’ve got to find a way to make a better day/Oh, Marian…”

Maid Marian makes an entry in here by the width of a well-placed arrow, as it seems just yesterday when I saw it (it probably was, knowing the BBC’s repeats schedule.) Devised and written by Tony Robinson (of Blackadder fame), this was a twist on the story of Nottingham’s most famous man in tights - the twist being that Robin Hood was a lazy, yuppie coward, and it was his feisty girlfriend who did all the work.

The cool-talking, tomboyish Marian (Kate Lonergan) lived near the peasants’ village of Worksop, with her band of Merry Men, a group of assorted and easy-going mercenaries. Technically, she was going out with Robin (Wayne Morris), but with his long hair and fear of any kind of conflict, the romance factor was nil. He was actually a tailor from Kensington who seemed to be an early Lawrence Llewellyn-Bowen prototype. The rest of the gang were Barrington, a Rastafarian (Danny John-Jules); slow-witted, foul-smelling Rabies (Howard Lew Lewis) and Little Ron, a tough dwarf (Mike Edmonds.) Together they fought the forces of evil, and robbed from the rich, namely the vicious King John (Forbes Collins), and those who did his dirty work: the conniving Sheriff of Nottingham (Tony Robinson) and his guard henchmen, Gary (Mark Billingham) and Graeme (David Lloyd.) To be honest, the Sheriff never stood a chance, especially as he was constantly having to take time out to placate the King’s nephew, the incredibly childish/camp Guy of Gisborne (Ramsay Gilderdale), who was the royal, medieval equivalent of Violet Elizabeth Bott.

Maid Marian and Her Merry Men was an award-winning programme, and deservedly so. It was like Blackadder for kids, and it had a fantastic range of characters. Marian was the ultimate example of female empowerment, and Robin was the perfect example of why some women consider themselves better off alone. Barrington was always on hand to provide a rap interpretation of events, and the Sheriff was so venal and so driven that you almost wanted him to succeed. Tony Robinson’s portrayal of Worksop as a village of idiots (including Gladys, played by Hilary Mason, and Snooker, played by Robin Chandler) with nothing for industry but mud, and the odd chicken, was effortlessly funny, and no doubt pretty accurate too.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 8/10

The Magic Roundabout

2006-05-17T12:12:00.000Z

THE MAGIC ROUNDABOUT
Made by: BBC
Shown on: BBC
Years shown: 1965-77

The Magic Roundabout begun life as Le Manege Enchante, a French animated series created in 1965 by Serge Donat. The BBC bought the rights to show it in the UK, and handed it over to Eric Thompson (father of actress, Emma), to do with it what he could. Like every true Brit, Thompson, who also narrated, was highly suspicious of the French, and so he basically ignored Donat’s scripts, and rewrote the episodes based on what seemed to be going on in the animation.

He also renamed all the characters, including Dougal the sugarlump-loving dog, who the indignant French at first thought was named De Gaulle, and believed therefore that Thompson was making a judgement on their government. Others were less problematic: there was Florence, a little girl with a bad haircut, who seemed to be Dougal the dog’s girlfriend (see also Crystal Tipps & Alastair); Brian the snail; Ermintrude the cow, who could spin her head around 360 degrees, and was allegedly based on Thompson’s wife, Phyllidia Law - although maybe not because of the neck skills; Mr Rusty, who owned the roundabout; Dylan the guitar-strumming rabbit, named after Bob Dylan, who would be horizontal if he was any more laid back; and, of course, Zebedee, who, with his spring base, looked as though he’d escaped from being a jack-in-the-box. The irate Mr MacHenry was supposedly in charge of the whole thing. The stories were simple, and often involved the easily-confused Dougal having something basic explained to him by one of the others, usually Florence, so children could learn along with him.

Of course, everyone remembers The Magic Roundabout because of the popular theories that each character stood for one of the major drugs - Dylan’s relaxed state, for example, was put down to some non-PC reefer smoking. Eric Thompson is no longer with us, but his wife, Phyllidia Law remains adamant that his intentions were entirely pure and wholesome, and that The Magic Roundabout characters have earned their dodgy reputations unfairly. But then, Zebedee did always say, “Time for bed!” at the end of the episode, which was a little questionable, seeing as it was only late afternoon.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 6/10

Look and Read

2006-05-17T12:04:00.000Z

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)

The Krypton Factor

2006-05-17T11:56:00.000Z

THE KRYPTON FACTOR
Made by: Granada
Shown on: ITV
Years shown: 1977-95

This was another show which was not aimed specifically at kids but, nonetheless, I think they made up a substantial part of the audience. The Krypton Factor had a reputation as the toughest quiz show on television, but it wasn’t really fair to call it a quiz show - it was five rounds of mental torture, physical exhaustion, and ritual humiliation. The idea sprung from the success of the 1977 Superman film, and the winner of the series would claim the title of UK Superperson. Gordon Burns was the host, just the right side of Jeremy Paxman in style and presentation; the contestants were members of the public who fancied themselves as hyper-intelligent, super-fit, or both. Almost all came a cropper.

Round one was the observation round, easing you in gently. The contestants were shown a short film clip, and were then asked questions: what colour were the socks worn by the man in the tweed jacket? Was the woman carrying a clipboard when she came into the room? How many cars passed by while the little boy was waiting? A bit like something you’d have to do at school, really. Early clips starred a barely-known Steve Coogan, and ‘comedy’ duo Hinge and Bracket, but a later, budget-blowing mini-serial called ‘Dead Ringer’ had an ensemble cast of Tony Slattery, Tony Robinson, Katie Puckrik and Linda Lusardi.

Round two was all about mental agility, some kind of IQ test with diagrams and a bit of spatial awareness thrown in. Ugh. Contestants had 40 seconds to answer as many questions correctly on something like a sequence of playing cards, or the construction of a sentence.

The next round always sorted the men from the boys. It was the dexterity round, where the competitors had to complete a 3-D puzzle, usually made of Perspex, which looked fiendishly hard. You could see the frustration on the face of Gareth from Tunbridge Wells as, three minutes in, he was still trying to figure out which bit was the base of the puzzle. To make matters worse, the sadistic Burns would conspiratorially whisper the answer to the audience, while his victims were sweating under the studio lights.

But those who flunked out in the earlier rounds often got their comeuppance when it came to the gruelling fitness round. Basically, it was a 400m army assault course in Bury, Lancashire, and it was inevitable that, during the show, one man would fall off the balance-beam or the rope-swing, and land in the mud; and the token woman would finish a distant last, despite the fact that the women were always given a head start. Lots of quality eighties sportswear on display.

After that, it was back to the studio for the general knowledge round, which always seemed like a bit of a relief. It was quick-fire questions, and to up the tension, the players were swathed in darkness and only illuminated when they were answering a question.

I was sorry when The Krypton Factor ended, because there was something peculiarly British about it - the contestants knew they had no chance in hell of winning, but they still threw themselves into it wholeheartedly. And everyone at home was just glad it wasn’t them tripping on that cargo net.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 8/10

(Thanks to the BBC News website for the borrowed pic)

Knightmare

2006-05-16T15:27:00.000Z

KNIGHTMARE
Made by: Anglia
Shown on: ITV
Years shown: 1987-94

My mum took one look at the title sequence of Knightmare, with a animated knight riding into a Dungeons & Dragons style castle, and decreed that I wasn’t allowed to watch it. I only wish, when I occasionally sneaked the odd disobedient look at it, that it had lived up to her hype. Knightmare was in the same league as The Adventure Game, which ended a year before Knightmare began, except that the competitors in this virtual-reality universe were children and not minor celebrities.

Every week, a team of four children (who, tellingly, were usually boys) would be welcomed into the Knightmare castle by the dungeon master, Treguard of Dunshelm (Hugo Myatt), and one of them would be separated from his friends in order to be the pawn in their puzzles. This individual would have to don the Helmet of Truth, a big, horned hat which covered their eyes, and step into an empty studio. Except it wasn’t really empty. The other three children would be back at headquarters with Treguard, and on their screens they could see their friend in a virtual world which he could not see. They would guide him by saying, “side-step one to your right” etc, and he would have to go in and out of doors, collect vital objects, and try to avoid colossal bombs which were about to explode, at which point the kids would all yell, “There’s a bomb in the room!”, useless for someone who can’t see it. At the time, I thought the special effects were brilliant, but always got very frustrated and exasperated with the boffins doing the guiding; so did Treguard, and he would sometimes add, in his dramatic tone, “Time is running out, my young charges. You had better get a move on, unless you want your friend to be killed, that is.” The 'death ' of a dungeoneer could be tracked on the Life Force meter, a computer graphic of a dungeoneer wearing a helmet; as his 'life force' drained away, bits of the helmet would peel away, followed by the skin and then the skull. It was actually quite macabre for a tea-tea show, and I used to get very worried that the hapless kid would actually die (and not just be given a wedgie by his team-mates for being crap at following instructions.)

There was one particularly memorable room in the Knightmare dungeon, which involved a giant chess board; the kids would control their friend, but they would be playing against the terrifying Dark Knight, a huge, masked figure in a long cloak. If he caught the child before he finished the puzzle, he would engulf him in his coat and the kid would ‘disappear’.

I can’t remember what the prize was if the children won, but they rarely did anyway, and at the end of the programme, Treguard would offer some words of doom and gloom regarding their fate, and that of the next team of youths. Nice.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 6/10

(Thanks to wikipedia for the borrowed pic)

King Rollo

2006-05-16T15:19:00.000Z

KING ROLLO
Made by: Filmfair
Shown on: BBC?
Years shown: 1983?

David McKee had created the enigmatic Mr Benn, but now he turned his attention to royalty, in this Ray Brooks-narrated animation. King Rollo was some kind of man-child, or perhaps he was intellectually subnormal; whichever way, he was in no condition to be running state affairs. He preferred climbing trees (and ripping his trousers), playing with his cat, Hamlet, or hanging out with neighbouring King Frank, and his dog. There was also Queen Gwen, who was perhaps his betrothed, but he was still at the pulling pigtails stage of courting. The only indicator that Rollo was an adult was that he had a full beard.

Luckily, as with most royal families, his life was run for him by his parental figures, the Cook and the Magician, who taught and disciplined him (and probably helped him to shave.) Like Mr Benn, only thirteen episodes of King Rollo were ever made, and this was a terrible shame, because it was nice to see such harmless and entertaining whimsy given air-time on children’s TV.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 7/10

(Thanks to www.thechestnut.com for the borrowed pic)

The Keith Harris and Orville Show

2006-05-16T15:10:00.000Z

THE KEITH HARRIS AND ORVILLE SHOW
Made by: BBC
Shown on: BBC
Years shown: 1982-90

Dear God, I promise that I will never switch on the television set again, if you would only wipe all memory of this programme from my brain. Oh well, it’s worth a try. Unfortunately, nobody can easily forget this bright green duck in a nappy, who was manipulated by the baldy-permed ventriloquist, Keith Harris. There really was no point to Orville; he was supposed to be cute (“I wish I could fly, right up to the sky” etc), but most people would have preferred him with orange sauce. His nemesis, also being worked by the multi-tasking Harris, was the gangly monkey, Cuddles, who, judging by his voice, smoked at least forty a day. Like the rest of us, he always wanted to cause Orville considerable grievous bodily harm, but inevitably ended up caught up in his own traps. The Keith Harris and Orville Show featured all the usual music hall sketches and songs, but also, in later years, pop guests, who must have really thought they’d hit rock-bottom.

During the mid eighties, Orville was with the BBC, and Emu was over on ITV - so the question remains: who would have won a fight between Keith Harris and Rod Hull? Wouldn’t have minded watching that instead.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 1/10

(Thanks to Five TV's website for the borrowed pic)

Jossy's Giants

2006-05-15T13:50:00.000Z

JOSSY'S GIANTS
Made by: BBC
Shown on: BBC
Years shown: 1984-6

Theme tune: "Swapping their homework for footwork/Kicking the ball till its dark/Here go Jossy's Giants/Football's just a branch of science/Head the ball now, Jossy calls.../Jossy's Giants!!??/Dependable, reliant/Put your faith in Jossy's Giants/Get stuck in, we're gonna win.../Jossy's Giants!!"

The shouty opening titles by Mike Arnott had a bunch of disparate, yobbish-looking kids trying to spell out ‘Jossy’s Giants’ with placards, and getting the spelling wrong countless times. This was no Enid Blyton.

Geordie darts commentator Sid Waddell got the idea for this series from spending Saturday mornings watching his son’s football team, The Churwell Lions, get repeatedly beaten by rival teams (The Churwell Lions later appeared in the series as themselves, a rival team to the stars.) Taking up his pen, he created the Glipton Grasshoppers, a useless bunch of pre-teen reprobates who acquire as a new manager, Joswell ‘Jossy’ Blair (Jim Barclay), a former brilliant child star, who received a career-wrecking injury on his full debut for Newcastle United. He took it upon himself to straighten the boys out, show them what real training and commitment was all about, and forced them to wear a black and white strip. The kids were a walk-over compared to Councillor Glenda Fletcher (Jenny McCracken), who always had some opposition to Jossy’s plans; the two revelled in their arguments with each other which, of course, meant they fancied each other rotten.

The makers of Jossy’s Giants were of the Byker Grove school of casting, and selected boys from local schools and youth clubs who could play football, believing it was easier to teach them to act rather than teach drama-school kids how to be ruffian footballers. One of the show’s stars was Mark Gillard, who played cheeky striker, Ross Nelson, and who - at the age of six - I had quite a crush on. But if the kids’ acting was suspect, they knew how to make them look good…by securing England skipper Bryan Robson, as a guest star.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 8/10

(Thanks to the BBC's comedy website for the borrowed pic)

Jonny Briggs

2006-05-15T13:37:00.000Z

JONNY BRIGGS
Made by: ?
Shown on: BBC
Years shown: 1985-87

Life in a northern town, eh? Trouble up mill, and then there’s no time to eat your Hovis sandwiches and drink your warm ale. Actually, Jonny Briggs was a northern (but not Geordie, as many people seem to think) kids’ drama series that put many of its poncy southern counterparts to shame. There was that title sequence, with Jonny (Richard Holian) careering down a slide with his dog, Razzle, to the sound of some slightly fruity oompa-band music. The tyke would then chase the dog back to their modest working class home, to the bosom of his slightly dysfunctional, but loving, family.

There was Mam (Jane Lowe), who wore an apron most of the time, and sorted out all of “Our Jonny’s” woes; and Dad (Leslie Schofield), who went out to work, but did bugger-all in the home except sit in his easy chair and dispense advice. Jonny was the youngest of four kids, which accounted for eighty per cent of the wrinkles on his nine year old forehead, especially as he had to share a bedroom with his two brothers. The eldest was Rita (Sue Devaney), who was about 18, and when she wasn’t working, she was involving her timid friend Marilyn in all kinds of schemes, or going to the gym for some vigorous exercise in all the latest gear. Then there was curly-haired Humphrey, who, at sixteen, was the quiet, introspective member of the Briggs household, noted for his eyebrow-wiggling abilities and the fact that he was the only one who was actually nice to Jonny. The bane of Jonny’s young life was fourteen year old Albert (Tommy Robinson), a gangly bully-boy, who was always trying to make a fast buck, at anyone’s expense, and who would do exactly what Jonny didn’t want him to do, just for the sheer pleasure of it. You couldn’t help but feel for Jonny.

He usually had it rough at school as well. His best friend was Pam, but the two of them were constantly taunted by the class cow, Ginny, and her friends. Poor Jonny was entrusted by Miss Broom (Karen Meagher) to look after the class rabbit during the school holidays; initially, Mam was horrified, but when she did relent to it the rabbit went missing (as does Razzle, in a different episode.) Similarly, Jonny’s family ate all the biscuits that he has slaved to make for the school fete. Miss Broom was always very sympathetic, and tolerant too - she needed to be with that girl in the class who stood up and began all her sentences with “My mother, who’s a nurse…”. Mr Hobbs (Simon Chandler) was the young, well-mannered teacher who would sometimes visit Miss Broom, and would be greeted with a chorus of “Ooooooo”s from the (rightly suspicious) kids.

Jonny did have wonderful moments of triumph over his spiteful classmates, or his bullying siblings, but there were also great family incidents, which were touching without being schmaltzy, such as when the children decorate the basement in tin foil for their parents’ silver wedding anniversary.

Veteran actor Leslie Schofield had a lengthy stay in Albert Square, while the brilliant Sue Devaney had already appeared in Coronation Street, and would go on to feature in, among other things, Spatz, Casualty and dinnerladies.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 8/10

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

John Craven's Newsround/Newsround

2006-05-15T13:30:00.000Z

JOHN CRAVEN'S NEWSROUND/NEWSROUND
Made by: BBC
Shown on: BBC1
Years shown: 1972-present day

The frantic xylophone and percussion intro, like an urgent news flash, fooled you into believing that this was a serious news programme. And it was clear that John Craven wanted it to be a credible, ground-breaking programme, bringing up-to-the-minute news to children in a way that was accessible to them. But unlike most starch-shirted BBC news presenters, Craven would sit there in his thick-knit, patterned jumper, bringing us such earth-shattering news as the plight of a pair of pandas in London Zoo, or the longest domino-rally in the world, or maybe even a man who’s invented a house on wheels. Even when I was six, I knew these couldn’t be the most pressing matters of the day; they couldn’t be what the grown-ups were reading about in their big newspapers. To be fair to Newsround, they did bring us some very memorable and saddening reports about the famines in Ethiopia, but they always seemed overly-concerned about the endangered habitat of the koala, or explaining to us what CFCs stood for, for the millionth time. As we entered the mid 1980s, the title was shortened to just Newsround, and Craven was joined by future BBC sports’ presenter Helen Rollason (who sadly died of cancer in August 1999), and Roger Finn, who was quite dishy in a non-threatening way. Since then, there have been a list of mainly homogenous presenters, with an average age of 17; the promising ones go on to mainstream BBC news, and the others find jobs on Animal Hospital or somewhere not too taxing.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 5/10

(Thanks to www.londonist.com for the borrowed pic)

Jim'll Fix It

2006-05-14T15:16:00.000Z

JIM'LL FIX IT
Made by: BBC
Shown on: BBC
Years shown: 1973-89

Theme tune: “If you want to sit in the Mastermind chair/Or stand on an aeroplane’s wing in the air/If you want to play the slide-trombone/Or operate a telephone/If you want to read the classified scores/Or if you want to take the floor/Jim’ll fix it!”

AND “Your letter was only the start of it/One letter and now you’re a part of it/Now you’ve done it/Jim has fixed it for you/There must be something that you always want to do/The one thing that you always wanted/Now you’ve done it/Jim has fixed it for you, and you and you, and ba-ba-baaaaa…”

Now then, now then children, what have we told you about talking to strange men? And, let’s face it, they didn’t come much stranger than Sir Jimmy Saville, ex-popular music disc-jockey and London Marathon enthusiast. In his pastel shell-suits and gold jewellery, he looked like some kind of pimp, or at least an aged Scouser thinking about stealing your hub-caps.

Every week, nineteen million people would watch Sir Jim read letters from members of the public, usually children, which began, “Dear Jim, please will you fix it for me to…” There were about 350,000 letters annually, and the requests ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous, and you had to worry about some of the kids; playing football with Kevin Keegan is fair enough, and meeting The Bay City Rollers is almost forgivable, but what about the boy who wanted to visit a Toby jug factory? He had obviously got the wrong show, and his letter should have gone to The Antiques Roadshow.

Nobody can easily forget the boy scout troop who wanted to eat lunch on a roller-coaster at Blackpool Pleasure Beach - what were they thinking? Or maybe it was the evil scheming of a very sadistic scout-master. Anyway, needless to say they ended up with face-masks of strawberry milkshake, and half-eaten hamburgers splattered all over their laps. Other noteworthy fix-its were the blowing up of a cooling tower, a kid who wanted to burn £1 million (was it one of The KLF while still in short trousers?), and someone who wanted to meet Manuel from Fawlty Towers. I, personally, never wrote to Jim, but someone I know wrote in begging to meet Nick Kamen, the model from the Levis laundrette advert - and Jim cruelly did not grant her wish.

At the end of the segment, after we’d seen the child having their dream fulfilled (often using the so-called magic of the blue-screen effect, which was a complete cop-out), they would return to the studio, dressed in their Sunday best and accompanied by whoever had helped them to achieve the fix-it eg. Kevin Keegan, Les McKeown, or a foreman from the Toby jug factory. Jim would be reclining in his fix-it throne, and would begin with, “Now then, Mr Keegan, sir, did little Johnny behave himself at your football ground?” When the adult responded in the positive, Jim would then invite them to present the child with the coveted, shiny Jim’ll Fix It medal. It was all a bit like speech day at a private school, or the Queen presenting the New Year’s Honours.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 7/10

(Thanks to www.raf.mod.uk for the borrowed pic)

Jimbo and the Jet Set

2006-05-14T15:12:00.000Z

JIMBO AND THE JET SET
Made by: Peter Maddocks
Shown on: BBC
Years shown: mid-80s

When a factory got the dimensions of an order wrong, and mistook inches for centimetres, the result was Jimbo, a mini red and yellow aeroplane with serious ‘cute’ factor. This was the premise behind press cartoonist Maddocks’ creation, who lived at an airport run by the ginger, moustachioed Chief Controller (the aeroplane, not Maddocks, obviously.) Jimbo was actually a living, breathing piece of air transportation, a bit like Thomas the Tank Engine with lower production values, and he had other, similar friends to help him out: Tommy Towtruck, Sammy Steps and the comely Amanda Baggage, with enormous red lips. Jimbo was always raising the Chief Controller’s blood pressure with his antics, (remember the opening titles with the sheep singing a high-pitched “Jimbooooo!”?), but he always saved the day in the end, of course. When I was five this was my absolute favourite cartoon, and people used to whizz around the playground pretending to be Jimbo, but we weren’t the only ones who thought it was a good idea: I wonder where the Duchess of York got her idea for Budgie the Little Helicopter…?

SQUARE EYES RATING: 4/10

(Thanks to www.entertainmentrights.com for the borrowed pic)

Jem

2006-05-14T15:00:00.000Z

JEM
Made by: D.I.C.
Shown on: ITV
Years shown: 1985 onwards

Here are some things about the 1980s: political correctness was born, women became more prominent in the workplace, and pop groups had big hair and appalling clothes. Somehow, this American cartoon thought they could capitalise all of this. Jerrica, in her late teens, was the pretty leader of the all-girl pop group, The Holograms, along with Aja, Kimber (who played one of those keyboard-guitars, which dates the programme if nothing else did), Shana and Raya. She presided over the orphanage run by her late father, but he also left another legacy; he invented a kind of computerised holograph thing, which Jenna wore in her earrings, and which allowed her to become Jem. Now Jem was “truly outrageous!”, or so the theme song claimed, but all I can remember was that she was slightly more glamorous and less girl-next-door than Jenna, and that she wore even worse clothes. She had a boyfriend of course, called Rio - also the band's manager (how unprofessional) - who was Ken to her Barbie, but he didn’t know about her transformations. Like all good cartoons, there were bad guys or, in this case, girls - the rival pop group, The Misfits, made up of Pizzazz, Roxy, Stormer and Jetta. They all looked like they might be a bit ‘easy’. There was absolutely no point to Jem, except for a lot of moralising, and the opportunity for a lot of twangy computer-pop, but it was very popular. It was shown as part of the Wide Awake Club, and was a competition where kids as young as four or five would send in photos of themselves and their friends dressed as Jem and her band, often including some extremely reluctant brother/cousin/boy from off the street, who would be forced to don a white suit and bow-tie and pose as Rio. And parents were up in arms when young girls wanted to be the Spice Girls…

SQUARE EYES RATING: 2/10

(Thanks to the Universal Appeal Jem website for the borrowed pic)

Jamie and the Magic Torch

2006-05-13T14:17:00.000Z

JAMIE AND THE MAGIC TORCH
Made by: Cosgrove Hall/Thames TV
Shown on: ITV
Years shown: 1976-9 (and endless repeats)

Theme tune: "Jamie! Jamie!/Jamie and the Magic Torch/Down the helter-skelter, faster and faster/towards Cuckoo Land."

A true legend among children’s cartoons, Jamie was a little boy with a sweeping seventies quiff, and flared pyjamas. Every night his mother (who, eerily, just appeared on the programme as a shadow on his bedroom wall) would tuck Jamie into bed, and thirty seconds later he’d be up and about again. Nothing unusual about that with children, but Jamie was different. Together with his dog, Wordsworth, who wore a night-cap, Jamie would embark on nocturnal adventures thanks to his magic torch; he would beam it onto the floor, and a hole would appear - it led to a helter-skelter, which transported them straight into Cuckooland, via an exit in a tree.

Once in Cuckooland, Wordsworth could talk, although, unfortunately, in a Gloucestershire accent, and all kinds of crazy people would descend on them, clearly inspired by Yellow Submarine. There was Mr Boo, who flew around in a floating submarine, and was obsessed with counting things; similarly afflicted was Gotcha, a policeman who was half unicycle, who ate truncheons as a snack, and was preoccupied by early closing on Wednesdays (yes, I’m getting a headache from this too.) There was also Billy Bundy the Showbusiness Rabbit; Nutmeg the rag-doll, who had a bottomless handbag like Mary Poppins, and subsequently did nothing to help the feminist cause; and the truly bizarre and inappropriately-named Jo-Jo Help, who always arrived in a time of crisis, and then found as many excuses as he could for not helping out. At the end of the episode, the hole in the tree would appear, and it would be time for Jamie to return to his bedroom. Now, whichever way you look at it, Jamie was a little boy who needed help: if these were recurring dreams he was having, he was either taking some serious drugs or needed therapy, and if not, he was evidently having hallucinations brought on by insomnia. That’s what happens when your mum’s just a shadowy spectre.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 6/10

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

James the Cat

2006-05-13T14:10:00.000Z

JAMES THE CAT
Made by: Grampian Television
Shown on: BBC
Years shown: 1983-4 onwards

Theme tune: "My name's James, James The Cat/I've had fame,
Money, and all that/Now I'm here growing fat/Chasing birds and butterflies/James the cat"

For people who are not cat-lovers, black and white moggy James epitomised all their dislikes about the feline species. He was over-fed, boastful, vain and egotistical, and swanned around his home, the Corner House at number 104, without a care or responsibility in the world. His surroundings were a cross between those of Crystal Tipps & Alastair, and also Henry’s Cat: there was a psychedelic backdrop, but he had a bunch of animal friends along for the ride as well. Considering that this was probably intended to be set in Britain, there was an unusual selection of creatures living in James’ garden. Freda the kangaroo must have escaped from the zoo, and Citroen the frog must have hopped through while they were digging the channel tunnel. Rocky the rabbit and Mrs Lavender the snail were almost to be expected from an English country garden, but then there was a dragon…called Denis (although probably not the subject of the Blondie song.) Whether the dragon was related to Ivor the Engine’s Idris are unsubstantiated rumours, but what I want to know was where James got his fame and money, and what he did in order to lose them both? Maybe he was the Whiskas cat before he put on so much weight....

SQUARE EYES RATING: 3/10

(Thanks to www.80snostalgia.com for the borrowed pic)

Jackanory

2006-05-13T14:02:00.000Z

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)

Ivor the Engine

2006-05-12T13:04:00.000Z

IVOR THE ENGINE
Made by: Smallfilms
Shown on: ITV, then BBC
Years shown: 1959-63 and then 1976-7 (and repeats)

Wales. A giant of a nation. Where else could give us Tom Jones, Bonnie Tyler, Shakin’ Stevens, and Shirley Bassey, plus leeks, endless jokes about sheep and inbreeding, and long, unpronounceable place names? And where else could Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin choose to set this likeable, if low-key, yarn about a country railway? Somewhere “in the top left-hand corner of Wales” was the Merioneth and Llantisily Rail Traction Co. Ltd, the owners of Ivor the Engine, a lumbering vintage green train which served the people at Llaniog Station. Ivor the Engine was full of folk who seemed only to have one name, and who were consequently distinguished by their professions: Jones the Steam, (Ivor’s faithful driver), Dai the Station master, Owen the Signal, and Williams the Head Office (was he the entire Head Office?). Just when you thought the Welsh stereotypes couldn’t get any more extreme, they branched out into the village, where you could find Evans the Song, the choirmaster of the Grumbly and District Choral Society; Hughes the Gasworks, and Mrs Griffiths, the chair of the Antiquarian Society. There was also a donkey called Bluebell in there somewhere…but no sheep. But what made Ivor magical and raised him from the sprawling masses of working engines was the source of his steam-power. He was powered by the fire-breathing of the local Welsh dragon, Idris, who was stowed in the furnace, and who was a lot cheaper than hiring a couple of men to stoke the thing every five minutes. With Ivor the Engine, Smallfilms paved the way for other animators, who also created gentle adventures out of village life,
such as Pigeon Street, Postman Pat and, later on, another Welsh Wonder, Fireman Sam.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 3/10

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

Inspector Gadget

2006-05-12T12:58:00.000Z

INSPECTOR GADGET
Made by: D.I.C.
Shown on: ITV?
Years shown: 1983 onwards

Everyone remembers the opening titles to Inspector Gadget, with the titular sleuth climbing out of a manhole and demonstrating his vast arsenal of implements, to the theme music chant of “Go, Gadget, go!” It was the novelty of Gadget’s endless supply of ingenious appendages that kids thought was so fantastic - just as well this was sufficient distraction, because Gadget himself was a useless detective. The story went that he was once an ordinary human being, but one day he slipped on a banana skin and did himself a nasty injury - so instead of prescribing bed-rest and some Ibuprofen, the surgeons decided on the rather extreme option of putting him back together with gadgets, such as extendible limbs, and a set of helicopter blades folded into his hat. Just hope he was consulted first. Gadget’s boss was just known as Chief, and he was always blowing himself up with the self-destructing letters (although no-one offered to turn him into a cyborg); and his great enemy was Dr Claw, with his over-fed cat (maybe Claw’s first name was Henry…?), and the self-explanatory MAD agency. Gadget may have been an ineffectual cop, but his cases were resolved thanks to his know-all niece, Penny, with her proto-laptop, and his faithful dog, Brain, who always came off worst in any skirmish.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 5/10

Henry's Cat

2006-05-12T12:53:00.000Z

HENRY'S CAT
Made by: Bob Godfrey
Shown on: BBC1
Years shown: 1983 onwards
Theme tune: “He knows everything about nothing/And not too much about that/Hen-e-ry, Hen-er-y, you must know Hen-e-ry’s Cat”

One day at school, when I was eight, we had to write about our favourite and worst TV programmes. My worst was Henry’s Cat. It frustrated and annoyed me. Bob Godfrey’s workshop had already made the acclaimed weird-fest, Roobarb and Custard, as well as Noah and Nelly in the seventies, but now he was running out of ideas. I was a practical child who liked rational explanations and straight-forward answers; so who the hell was Henry? Why did we never see him? Did he know what his flea-bitten moggy was getting up to? Well. Henry was a bright yellow cat, not too intelligent, who used to say “Owww” a lot. His best friend was the delightfully-named Chris Rabbit, blue in colour, but there was also Douglas Dog, Denise Duck, Ted Tortoise, Sammy Snail, Pansy Pig, Mosey Mouse and the exotic-sounding - but actually quite xenophobic when you think about it - Philippe Frog. Keeping law and order around the place, and doing a pretty below-par job of it, were Constable Bulldog and the cruel Farmer Giles. All kinds of wild escapades were embarked upon, with Henry locking paws with the world’s only intelligent sheep, Rum Baa Baa; but they usually turned out to be daydreams, and in fact the animals had spent all day lazing around the garden, which was also a common twist with the kids in Fame too.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 2/10

(Thanks to www.henryscat.com for the borrowed pic)

He-Man and the Masters of the Universe

2006-05-11T10:13:00.000Z

HE-MAN AND THE MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE
Made by: Filmation
Shown on: BBC1
Years shown: 1982 onwards

Toy company Mattel came up with the ultimate marketing ploy for their new line of action figures - turn them into TV stars, of course. They invested huge amounts of money in 65 episodes of this, one of the crappiest, most shoddily-made cartoons ever to be a blight on our TV screens. Prince Adam of Eternia, an interesting mix of ludicrous muscles, a girly blond bob, and a pink waistcoat, led a double life. He held his sword aloft, cried out, “By the power of Greyskull!” and turned into He-Man, the self-confessed “most powerful man in the Universe”, who wore red underpants and criss-cross braces across his considerable chest. From this point on, it was all very boring because, obviously, the most powerful man - not to mention the most modest - cannot be beaten with any ease. Prince Adam also owned a cowardly green (?!) tiger, called Cringer (he obviously knew what kind of a series he was starring in), who had the ability to shed all fears and become Battlecat. As a consequence, thousands of eight year old boys around the country kidnap the neighbours’ tabby, try to stick a helmet on it, and throw it over the wall to see if it can leap across gorges. He-Man’s great adversary was Skeletor, some kind of mummy who was obviously very pissed off at having been disturbed from a lifelong slumber; he was actually quite grotesque, with rags hanging off him, but his impact was lessened by his pathetic cronies, such as Buzz-Off (a man in a bee outfit) and Whiplash, who was some kind of dragon with a deadly tail. But all He-Man had on his side, apart from the cat, was some kind of floating ghost in a purple robe, possibly called Orca, and someone with the very odd name of Man-at-Arms - let’s hope he never changed his job, or it really wouldn’t work.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 1/10

(Thanks to www.tellytunes.com for the borrowed pic)