Today We Are Watching….

….I Can Cook, the new-ish CBeebies show that aims to teach small children just that. The fact that they can cook, that is.  Kind of like a Nigella-style show for the under-fives, this slipped quietly and unannounced into the schedules last autumn and has been slowly driving me to distraction ever since.

To be fair, not quite everything about this show is wrong. The perennially perky presenter Katy – who looks so trim that I refuse to believe she is actually eating any of the goodies she whips up on camera – does come up with some more realistic dishes than on, say, Big Cook Little Cook (because chaps, let’s face it, nobody is making the Vegetable Toolbelt you did the other week. NOBODY…..). I could potentially see myself making Easy Peasy Pizza for example, provided it really was as simple as they make it out to be.

But there are other things here which I have noticed on those occasions when the child has made me watch this. It appears to be – how shall we put this – economical, for example. Nothing wrong with that of course unless it actually looks as if your show was shot in your producer’s kitchen using a few random bits sourced from the IKEA marketplace. Which in some ways this does. I’m convinced they may even have gotten some change from the £1.20 it must have cost to put this programme together.

Secondly, does Katy actually do any work? Because I’m not entirely convinced. Granted, she does come up with some tempting sounding recipes, but then proceeds to get a fleet of children into the kitchen to ‘help’ her, all the while singing a selection of  songs and uttering randomly mundane catchphrases (‘with ovens beware, because it’s hot in there’. Er, thanks……) And when the food is all done and dusted and cooking, what does she then go and do? Oh yes, that’s right – sits down with her guitar, sings a song about her latest culinary creation and – LEAVES THE KIDS TO DO THE WASHING UP. Well now that’s just delightful isn’t it? They do get to eat whatever it is they’ve made but I bet they have to clean their own plates once the credits have rolled.

In short I don’t think this is likely to replace Big Cook Little Cook in my affections any time soon, since it appears to feature all of the cooking without any of the actual charm. Still, that Easy Peasy Pizza does look appetitising. Just as long as I remember to roll up my sleeves and give my hands a wash before I start work……

The mighty power of Peppa….

With an almost crushing inevitability, the child has discovered the phenomenon that is Peppa Pig – and like most small people of her age, she loves it. Well come on, who wouldn’t? As silly as it appears it’s a gleefully subversive show that quite happily takes on such issues as the battle of the sexes (check out the Mothers Fire Brigade meeting episode for further proof), our ever expanding waistlines and our fascination with must-have gadgets (when was the last time you saw a Sat Nav mentioned in a show for the under-fives? Well when was it??????) There’s even an episode called Picnic, although I have to admit I was somewhat disappointed when I tuned in and discovered it had nothing to do with French New Wave cinema.

But anyway…..the upshot of this new found Peppa devotion was that the child and I decided we just had to add a DVD of porcine antics to our ever expanding collection (since it is a sad but true fact that the DVD player is now dominated by the likes of Gigglebiz, Charlie and Lola and various Disney classics featuring sweet-faced princesses, while my decidedly child-unfriendly copies of Heathers, Clerks and the like have been relegated to the bedroom shelf and may get watched again some time around 2024…..). But what the heck. It’s the time of year for presents and I figured Peppa had to be among them.

So it was that the DVD was purchased – and somehow I had managed to snap up one which had most of the episodes we had recently seen on Milkshake. So we put it on and watched it. And watched it again. And again. And again. And again. And indeed, again, until I knew all of the scripts off by heart and was having to push my eyeballs back into the sockets with the sheer effort of watching it so many times. I estimate we must have watched it at least four thousand times in the first 48 hours of having it, leaving me to wonder whether there is a word for someone who has to sit through ‘Daddy Loses His Glasses’ on a loop. Unfortunate, perhaps. Just to make it even more fun, the child found a certain moment in said episode funny and then insisted on watching that microsecond over and over and over and over again, presumably just to test my endurance. This particular habit could prove interesting when we take her on her first cinema outing, to see The Princess And The Frog, in a couple of months time. I am currently in the process of explaining that the nice cinema man won’t run the same bit of the film over and over again for her and she’ll just have to sit nicely and watch the whole thing like all the other children.

But as I was being subjected to this home entertainment form of Chinese water torture, it suddenly occurred to me that this is presumably how children’s DVDs rack up sales in the first place. It’s an interesting method – the parent, driven to distraction with repeated viewings of the same Peppa/Thomas/Balamory/Waybuloo DVD, thinks to themselves ‘oh for God’s SAKE, let’s just go and buy another one so I don’t have to sit through this all over again!’ Thus the cycle is complete. And this would also explain how we ended up with the whole of the first two series of Charlie and Lola on DVD – could it be that the child made me watch This Is Actually My Party so often that I was compelled to rush to HMV and buy another one (while at the same time thinking ‘oh what the hell, they’re only a fiver?’) Er, quite possibly.

Still, I suppose I’ll have the chance to get my own back when she is older and can watch some of my films – some long ones with subtitles should do for starters. In the mean time I’m off to see whether Daddy Pig has found his glasses yet. Bet they’ll be in his armchair…..

I Don’t Run CBeebies. I Don’t Run CBeebies. And repeat to fade…..

If there’s one thing the child hasn’t quite grasped yet, it is that whatever happens to be showing on our TV is essentially out of my hands. Oh yes, I have the power over the DVD collections, the remote control and perhaps most importantly the off-switch (yes believe it or not it does get used sometimes in favour of nursery, softplay, art classes and other forms of healthy social interaction with members of the under-five community). But when it comes to schedules and programming, there is nothing I can do.

So in other words, it’s no good getting all cross with me when we’re watching Numberjacks (a show I could write a whole thesis on, never mind a blog entry) and number 4 gets sent out yet again over number 3 – the child’s favourite, it seems. “But Mummy, I want 3 to go out,” she complains. And once again I find myself uttering that well-worn phrase “Look I’m sorry, I don’t run CBeebies, there is nothing I can do about it.” And if the schedulers decide to show the same episode of Gigglebiz over and over and over and over again, or the ‘Makka Pakka Washes Faces’ episode of In The Night Garden for the 568th time, there is little I can do about it. Because, as I have said, I don’t run CBeebies.

Not that this explanation stood me in good stead recently when we were having a ‘sofa and telly day’  due to my having a particularly tricky work deadline and no available childcare, and the schedulers decided, unbeknown to us, to replace 3rd and Bird -something of a favourite round these parts (hence the above picture – I mean c’mon, who wouldn’t find that totally adorable??) with Tommy Zoom, which as everybody knows is second only to Our Planet in the CBeebies dullness stakes. The child was not happy – so not happy that she embarked on a full-blown tantrum and demanded that Mummy reinstate the silly bird programme immediately. “But what can I do?” I insisted. “I don’t run CBeebies.” No matter, apparently, I had to bring it back, cue more tears. “Look, seriously, it’s not up to me,” I pointed out, somewhat recklessly. “What would you have me do, call them and tell them to put it on?”

Er, yes, apparently. She promptly handed me her pink plastic Disney Princess play phone and for the next 20 minutes or so I was made to sit there, ‘pretending’ to speak to the controller of CBeebies to complain about how Muffin and her feathered companions had been taken off my telly and what a terrible injustice it was and could they do something about it please? By which time the next programme had come on and she didn’t care any more anyway.

She is kind of getting the idea now (to say nothing of getting the hang of the remote control so she can switch off anything she disapproves of), so realises that certain shows go ‘on holiday’ as I tactfully put it. But this didn’t stop her celebrating the other week when 3 did indeed get sent out on Numberjacks. “Mummy, Mummy, 3 has gone out!” she squealed, before leaping up and and down excitedly and declaring, “I’m happy!”

If only I could take credit for that one. Perhaps it’s time to pretend I really do run CBeebies after all…..

Five Things We’ve Noticed….

…..about the new CBeebies ‘Winter song’…..

1) It appears to have been filmed in Canary Wharf, right outside the offices of that much revered publication Reader’s Digest in fact. Quite how they managed to completely vacuum that area of people is another matter entirely.

2) Despite being a winter song it was quite obviously filmed in the height of summer, if the bright blue sky above is anything to go by. Maybe next year’s summer song will be filmed against a suspiciously cold and grey looking background.

3) The tunes just ain’t as catchy as they once were. The Spring song rocked, the Summer song had a kind of slightly corny but nonetheless likeable teen-pop vibe (think S Club 7 sung by people who aren’t completely convinced that this kind of thing was in the original job description), and the Autumn song was a mellow number which grew on us. This one kind of noodles around and ultimately seems to go nowhere.

4) Those kids standing at the front really aren’t too sure of the choreography are they?

5) CBeebies fleece jackets apparently come in a range of colours, and yet still look ever so slightly naff.

But apart from that of course we love it……:)

Today We Are Watching….

…..Come Outside, a programme so ancient that it predates even CBeebies (yes indeed, there was a time in the dim and distant past when CBeebies didn’t exist – let us think of it as ‘the before time’.). So old, in fact, is this stalwart of preschool viewing that the nephew, now aged nine, used to watch it in his toddler days.

With this knowledge in mind, it should come as no surprise to learn that it’s from a kinder, gentler era of children’s TV, before the days of dayglo CGI technology and perky presenters imploring us to visit the channel’s all-new website after practically every show. And one can’t help thinking that the archive is exactly where it should have stayed, for the adventures of Aunty Mabel (Lynda Baron – yup, that is Nurse Gladys to you and I) and her uber-talented pooch Pippin really does feel like the product of another era.

Or perhaps I think it’s time it should be consigned to the annals of history because it irritates me so bloomin’ much.

This is a show about a nice middle-class lady, clad in Laura Ashley florals, who roams the country in a big spotty plane whenever she has to do something as mundane as have a dental check-up or buy groceries. Her canine buddy (who, given the fact the show was first made in 1993, probably shuffled off to doggie heaven a long time ago ) accompanies her everywhere of course, occasionally rolling in mud or doing something similarly comical to allow her to end every show in a kind of eye-rolling ‘awwwww but how can I be cross with you when you’re this cute?’ kind of way. It’s all very gentle, the kind of programme your mum might watch if it was on BBC1 on a Sunday night and had a whole bunch of quirky supporting characters thrown in.

All of which leads me to wonder what it is this woman actually does that allows her to swan all over the country in a private plane. She might look like a kindly middle-aged lady but part of me thinks she is actually a ruthless businesswoman of the sort that turn up on The Apprentice every so often. Clearly whatever it is she does though allows her time off to visit toothpaste factories and the like, since she seems to spend most of the episode time examining the goings on on production lines (I can only think she must own the factories, otherwise the manager should be informed that a mad woman with a dog and a spotty plane has infiltrated the premises in order to check the stripes in her Aquafresh are in alignment. But anyway….).

Like so many of these shows, however, it was clearly made on a budget of about £1.20. Last week I came across an episode in which Aunty Mabel jets off to Spain (er, Spain? In a tiny one-seater plane? All the way from the English countryside???????) to see how marmalade is made. Cue lots of shots of her standing in front of a slightly wonky-looking backdrop of orange groves and the like which suggests she is nowhere near Seville but probably in a studio in Grimsby or somewhere similarly distant from the Med. There’s something rather glorious about kids’ shows that are clearly a bit short on cash (my current favourite is I Can Cook, which may well have cost a fortune to make but really does look as if it was whipped up in the presenter’s kitchen) but frankly, this is pushing it a bit. I confidently expect to switch on my TV some time soon and see our leading lady standing in front of a photo of a beach, claiming she has jetted off to Aruba for a spot of winter sunshine.

Still, as annoying as this show may be, I realised just how much it had seeped into my psyche when Lynda Baron showed up on EastEnders a few months ago. “Look!” I shrieked. “It’s Aunty Mabel!” Not that these shows are messing with my head or anything. I think I’d better go and have a nice liedown……

I Did Shakespeare, You Know….

It has been pointed out to me since I wrote the piece the other day on veteran actors doing children’s TV (by an older viewer tuning in with a toddler) that I missed out the contribution made to In The Night Garden by one Derek Jacobi. Yes, in case you hadn’t noticed, one of our most revered and highly regarded actors is currently gracing CBeebies three times a day to relate the gentle adventures of Iggle Piggle, Upsy Daisy and the Tombliboos to the preschool audience. And very good he is too.

I can kind of understand why somebody as well-spoken and eloquent as Jacobi was chosen to narrate the show, given the media fuss that production company Ragdoll had to weather over the Teletubbies’ inability to speak properly.  Although whenever I watch In The Night Garden – which isn’t nearly as much as it used to be since the child has declared it is “for babies” and only grudgingly tunes in – I can’t help feeling this overriding sense of what could have been going through Jacobi’s noble head at the time.

Kind of like this:  “I’m a Shakespearian actor you know. I’ve won awards for it. I’ve played Hamlet. I received a Bafta for I, Claudius. So let’s see….what can I possibly do now? Hmmmmmm…..I know, I’ll go on TV and sing the Makka Pakka song on a daily basis. Oh, won’t it be such fun, luvvies??” And so on.

Probably just as well he does such a good job of it really, otherwise he would run the risk of sounding really stupid. Er, hang on a second…..

Is Yo Gabba Gabba The Hippest Kids’ Show Ever?????

Yes. It is. Quite possibly. Since this frankly bizarre show for the under-fives started in 2007 it’s attracted the sort of guests who wouldn’t be out of place in your average, music-loving parent’s record collection. While here in the UK a band appearing on a kid’s show usually amounts to something like The Cheeky Girls turning up on Space Pirates, Yo….has come up with some far catchier ways to entertain its younger viewers. Let us see the evidence….

First, it’s those uber-hip rockers MGMT taking a psychedelic trip through the world of art:

Next, it’s Mates Of State explaining the importance of sharing, through song:

Then, we have Of Montreal (Of Montreal, for heaven’s sake. I mean I thought I was the only person in the world who had heard of them…..) with an interesting little number about dental hygiene:

And the Jewish/Arab retro dance duo Chromeo are also getting in on the act, reminding us how important it is to wash our hands:

And finally, our very own Ting Tings perform the musical backdrop to the party in Brobee the Monster’s tummy. Or at least their video does:

Today We Are Watching….

……dirtgirlworld, the much vaunted new CBeebies show that is currently plugging the gap between Nina And The Neurons and the bizarrely titled Big Fun At Five (this has always bothered me. I can’t comment on what I’m usually doing at five o’clock but it usually involves rather frazzled tidying up of assorted mismatched Barbie doll shoes, trying to decide what on earth to have for dinner and, currently, lamenting the fact it is dark ALREADY. So precious little Big Fun. Unless you mean the 1980s Blame It On The Boogie hitmakers. I’m sure you don’t.)

But I digress. dirtgirlworld has been drafted in to plug that pesky little gap where CBeebies usually seems to run out of ideas and throws in something like Tommy Zoom or The Large Family – two of the dullest CBeebies shows I have ever seen (but I really think that is a whole other post).

I welcomed this idea, and the child was so excited about the show that she had already decided it was her favourite programme before it had even started, purely on the basis of the trailers. Of course small children have no concept of scheduling and it took a fair bit of explaining on my part at this stage that it hadn’t actually started yet. Either way, I was looking forward to having something new, possibly educational, in that ‘difficult’ slot for her to watch.

And then I actually saw it.

Now I don’t know what it is they put in programmes for very small children that makes them delightfully appealing for preschoolers and, quite frankly, terrifying for the grown-ups who have to watch them, but this show has it in spades.

The initial concept – cool young lady lives in garden, has best friend called Scrapboy, sings cute pop songs, hangs out with a grub (imaginatively called Grubby) and Hayman the talking scarecrow, a kind of Worzel Gummidge for the Internet generation…..you see what I’m getting at here? So far, so surreal, I could handle that (look, I can handle the weirdness of Waybuloo so I am clearly a pro), but Dirt Girl World uses the oddest animation I’ve ever seen – giant, clearly human faces superimposed on to tiny computer generated bodies, that jiggle about and pull all kinds of odd expressions. Dirt Girl herself seems to have a whole range of strange facial tics, and don’t even get me started on Grubby, who has a human face grafted on to a giant yellow grub’s body, and looks not unlike something you might see in performance art rather than on a children’s TV show. Kids seem to love it. Adults, by and large, appear to have been freaked out by it. I’m sure I’m not the only one who shrieked and made a swift exit from the room the first time Dirt Girl’s oversized jiggly head came honing into view on my screen.

There was none of this in my day of course. Anything that wobbled in such a fashion was generally a puppet and therefore not scary as you could see the strings. Dirt Girl, on the other hand, is just every so slightly unsettling. But of course the under-fives don’t see it that way. I have a feeling this one could run and run – all of which means I am off to find a better hiding place……

Seriously. Aren’t you old enough to know better??????

For the benefit of older viewers, who might actually remember some of these people, we present our top five ‘actors of a certain age’  flexing their thespian muscles on kids’ TV…

5) Su Pollard in Little Robots

Thought the voice of Noisy the robot sounded familiar? Well it should do since it belongs to the former Hi-De-Hi legend. What would Peggy Ollerenshaw say?

4) Vic Reeves in Shaun The Sheep

He’s not actually in it, you understand but you can hear his dulcet tones in every episode since he sings the theme tune in inimitable, Vic Reeves style. All of which almost lets us forgive him for that execrable duet with the Wonder Stuff, but not quite.

3) Brian Blessed in Peppa Pig

I have to say I was astonished as the next parent to discover that booming Brian was in fact the voice of Grampy Rabbit. Does this mean he’s going to be too tied up with his porcine duties to be on I’m A Celebrity….Get Me Out Of Here? Boo.

2) Jane Horrocks in Fifi And The Flowertots

We thought we recognised that voice….and yes indeedy, it’s the lady otherwise known as Bubble from Ab Fab.  It’s a mere hop, skip and a jump from that to playing the part of an overgrown plant, although the frankly dubious dress sense of both characters actually gives them some kind of bizarre shared bond.

1) James Bolam in Grandpa In My Pocket

Yup, you heard correctly. It’s that bloke off The Likely Lads (and if you remember that show then you possibly are too old to be watching kids’ TV) playing the title character, a jolly pensioner with a ‘shrinking cap’ that allows him to become the size of a pinhead and fly around getting into all manner of scrapes. Actually this show appears to be a haven for veteran actors – we spotted Rula Lenska in it once. And that Welsh kid off Britain’s Got Talent. But hes not a veteran so he doesn’t count.

Today We Are Watching…

…..Big Cook Little Cook. OK, so it’s been around for blimmin’ ages and there doesn’t appear to be any great novelty in watching it, but I really think it’s worthy of a mention on this blog because I actually LOVE it  (not sure if the child does, she tends to just flounce off when it comes on or insist on a DVD. But then occasionally will suddenly decide she loves it and start demanding Vegetable Fridge Magnets or whatever recipe they may have made that day for lunch).

In fact Big Cook…to give it its shortened title (no offence to Little Cook, it’s just quicker to type!) appears to be beloved of many CBeebies-watching parents – in the case of many stay at home mothers it’s the aesthetically pleasing qualities of Big Cook in spite of his ridiculous cafe get-up, but for others such as myself it’s very simple – I UNDERSTAND it. In a children’s viewing world which requires me to get to grips with Piplings, Pontipines, cartoon pigs and, er, talking numbers that live in the sofa , the concept of a show in which two blokes – admittedly one of diminutive proportions – just stand there and COOK something is an utter blessing.

Well, almost. For as much as I love the show, I still do have some issues with it. The fact that they seem to come up with the strangest, most avant garde receipe ideas which yes, I know are aimed at teeny viewers but is there anybody out there who has actually tried making of them? Some of them, I admit, are very doable indeed (although their Clown Cheesecake is just terrifying and would be more in place in a Stephen King miniseries than on a cookery show for the under-fives) but others just defy description.

Admittedly each dish is meant to be tailored for the imaginary person or fairy tale character who has happened upon the cafe, and I don’t have a problem with that, but I sincerely doubt these guys have ever heard of portion control since each dish seems to be either the sort of thing that can be consumed in one mouthful, or something large enough to feed a small ravenous army. I swear I have seen these guys make a cake or a pie or something and just dish the whole lot up to their expectant customer, who then leaves an empty plate and a note saying how delicious it was. Which presumably they have plenty of time to write because they’re too full to move by that point.

Even that though pales in comparison with the time the pair whipped up a frozen dish, promptly stuck it in the freezer and then said, “Now we leave that to set for 12 hours…..” 12 HOURS????????? Er, this is a cafe, is it not??????? Now patience may be a virtue but even so, who on earth is going to sit patiently in a cafe waiting that length of time for their dish to be prepared, when they could just pop out to Starbucks and have something on their plate in two minutes flat? Have these guys never heard of the Blue Peter concept of ‘here’s one I prepared earlier?’ Clearly not. No wonder they only ever have one customer…….

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to try and wipe the memories of that clown cheesecake from my head…..