Kids' TV

Bing is a whiney nob

Same as above, my boy has his first day of school tomorrow and I’m very grateful that the old terrestrial broadcasters have kept the quality up so high. Compared to the avalanche of noisy cgi shite churned out by Netflix, Dreamworks and Disney’s preschool offering its not even a competition.

We’ve not watched a lot of CITV but the comedian Bec Hill has an Art Attack style show called Makeaway Takeaway that seems pretty fun from the times we’ve watched it.

Aye, saw a children's BBC writer/producer saying that they agonise over what to commission, knowing it needed to have educational value etc, only for the internets to churn out loads of crap that at best haven't given it thought, and at worst is downright damaging.

Oh really? Did you ever have dealings with Stephen Mulhern at all?

Not really. I was hired just before they launched the channel, so it was after the in-vision continuity where Mulhern was mostly employed. He was still doing Tricky TV and therefore had some promotional commitments but I only met him once. He seemed like a nice guy.

To clarify, I worked in the promotions/presentation department rather than making any of the shows.

The comments highlight some notable absentees.

- Pink Windmill and grotbags
- Supergran
- Bananaman
- Cosgrove Hall stuff like Count Dukula.

Loved Press Gang and Children's Ward, great way to cover serious issues in an approachable manner.

The pre SMTV stuff have been largely forgotten but was the highlight of my week. Ghost Train, Top Banana and Gimme 5 were the ones I remember most fondly, and then obviously during summer holidays you had Wide Awake Club / Wacaday. Funny to think how Timmy Mallet assaulting people with a foam hammer passed for entertainment, but it did. And then Transformers was on.

Watch Bluey, it's the rare show that is insulting to neither kids nor adults.

There’s got to be a whole generation of parents now who’ll never be able to listen to Holst’s Jupiter without turning into sobbing wrecks thanks to Sleepytime.

Speaking of which, the Christmas special of Old Jack’s Boat that Russell T Davies wrote where elderly Bernard Cribbins reminisces about his lost wife. Come on!

Thunderbirds was fascinating to witness, being sort of on the inside but not really involved with any of it. They got Weta to make all the sets (it had physical sets with CG characters), and it was incredibly expensive despite them doing it at a vast discount because head of Weta Richard Taylor is a massive Thunderbirds nerd. Our channel exec got to go visit the studio in New Zealand and I couldn't believe what I was seeing.

The resultant show was very good, and very successful considering it was on CITV (which always struggled against the other channels one way or another) and was, frankly, a genre of show that was deeply unpopular at the time (serialised action-adventure; comedy cartoons were all the rage).

The problem was I think ITV had convinced themselves it was their Doctor Who and expected similar returns. I think the toys sold poorly. So I think some people, internally at least, considered it a flop, but it was actually great and did very well for itself all things considered.

I always felt CiTV was a bit weak on preschool stuff but I might give him a try on Thunderbirds. Maybe it’ll break the current hold PJ Masks has on him.

It looks like it only exists on YouTube now, but there was a show about 15-20 years ago called Pocoyo that was just delightful. This is one of the ones that needed to be on the Guardian list, because it's just like the kind of thing people rave about on CBeebies. Stephen Fry used to do the voiceover.

It was, I believe, a Spanish show that was part-funded by Granada who owned a stake in the IP, so it definitely counts as an "original"! 

Without the whimsy it would be another Topsy and Tim. Which made me want to put my foot through the telly. Smug fuckers.