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r_scribblesSomething that I’ve meant to start doing for a while now, but haven’t got round to recently, is to start up a series of reviews for the new, weird world into which I have become indoctrinated over the last couple of years – the world of Pre School TV. Now, I haven’t had much time or energy to blog over the last 10 days or so due to my and Vi’s illness, but something I have done a lot of during time has been crashing out on the sofa watching said programmes. Due more to terrible reception in Canterbury than any sort of snobbery it’s an almost exclusive diet of CBeebies with us – CITV and Five just don’t have strong enough signals to fight through the static – but still there is the most amazing mixed bag of programmes, ranging from sublime through dull and weird all the way to just plain awful, aka ‘Finley The Fire Engine’. It often ends up being the genre of TV we end up watching most these days, so I thought I might as well let you kids in on this weird world of the primary coloured.
I’ll probably dip into these as and when they take my fancy. As to where I should start, well… there’s only one place that I can start if I’m talking about modern toddler telly – with Violet’s – and almost every child her age’s - perennial favourite…
I have a feeling that In The Night Garden is destined to become Violet’s Generation’s ‘Bagpuss’ – even though, if you look at how they were made, they couldn’t be more different. Whereas Bagpuss was the creation of a couple of wonderful, whimsical animators pottering about in a shed in Kent, and feels as though it was all made up on the spot, Night Garden has a constant feeling of hyper-professionality beneath its outwardly fuzzy demeanour. I mean, I’m pretty sure that now, in the noughties, any Pre School show, especially one made for the BBC would be researched and marketed to within an inch of its life before the cameras ever start rolling. You can see it with most toddler’s telly and you can really see it with Night Garden. One thing that sets it apart from a lot of competitor shows, however, is that Night Garden has really, really got it right. Many toddler’s shows are already trying to tell the viewers what they want. Night Garden just delights. And that’s why I see it as a modern Bagpuss – Violet loves the slightly surreal, fluffy, largely mute inhabitants of the garden with the same warmth I felt as a small child for the toys in Emily’s Shop.
And weird characters they are. Shall we meet them?
The ‘protagonist’, if you can call him that, is Igglepiggle.
He is the only character present who is not, apparently, a natural inhabitant of ‘The Garden’, rather a nightly visitor. He appears to live instead on a tiny, uncovered yacht adrift on the ocean, and the stars above him turn into the garden as he falls asleep, which is the main reason why I’m convinced the whole show is a metaphor for death, and that Igglepiggle, Sam Tyler style, is having one final, lucid vision before the dehydration of being adrift for nights on end finishes him off.
I mean, that’s obviously not it – it’s obviously a wonderful dream world that he goes to before sinking into a deeper sleep. But I like to pretend. Anyway, Igglepiggle is entirely mute – able only to communicate through squeaking and ringing a bell in his foot. He falls down a lot, which might be because of his horribly deformed head.
Upsy Daisy is Violet’s favourite, and probably the favourite of most little girls, for obvious reasons.
She moves with very carefully observed ‘little girl’ mannerisms, likes pretty things, kissing, noisiness, and being just a little bit bossy. None of the Upsy Daisy Dollies for sale – including Vi’s – are anywhere close to as darkly skinned as the real Upsy Daisy is. The makers of the show have claimed that this is because ‘no characters are supposed to represent any human Race’, but, come on, Upsy Daisy is Black, Mixed Race at a push. Those are multicoloured dreadlocks on her head – they’re fooling no one. Why not admit that? I dunno.
The Tombliboos look a little like Upsy Daisy Young, being about 2/3 of Upsy Daisy and Igglepiggle’s height, but are apparently, different sorts of creatures. They are Un – the biggest, whose voice has, worryingly, already broken; Oo – the pink and brown one who is apparently male, and very greedy; and the very adorable Ee – a slightly clumsy female.
They live together in a Tardis-like bush and generally scamper about like naughty clowns. Their trousers fall down with startling regularity. I think they’re my favourite, especially Ee, who is adorable.
Makka Pakka used to creep me out a little. He’s about the size of a large cat compared to Igglepiggle, he lives in a cave under a bridge, he’s basically the Night Garden’s Caretaker… he’s like one of the Epsilon Caste from Brave New World.
He has a little wheelbarrow full of cleaning products that he trundles around with him… oh! And he’s Obsessive Compulsive. Cripplingly so. He spends most of his time cleaning stones that he finds and than arranging them in order. Got to be clean. Got to be in order. Stack it up one two three four order is good good good good one two three four order is good… you get the idea with that. Lolmentalillness.
Mind you, if you look at an 18 month old, say, and the way that they order some things, again it’s much likely to be more a case of them studying that aspect of toddlers’ behaviour. Vi still likes to line many of her toys up in an exact order and often makes the same little ‘checking it’s all straight’ hand gestures as Makka Pakka does. Makka Pakka has grown on me, but he’s still a bit odd.
Smallest of all are the Pontypines, who appear to be a pretty straight homage of Firmin and Postgate’s work.
Very simple, wooden puppets, capable only of nodding, jumping and raising their hands, they communicate with long, conversational sounding ‘mi-mi-mi’s that Vi loves to copy. Their simplicity and 1970s look (check out Mr Pontypine’s Tache) feels like a very reverential nod towards the shows that my generation grew up with. They’re the size of insects to Igglepiggle and live in an odd little suburbia all of their own next door to the almost identical but blue clad neighbours, the Wottingers. The Pontypine Parents are the Karen Matthews of the Night Garden world – they’ve got 8 kids and they’re forever losing them. The Wottingers have an equally large brood but don’t get out as much as the Pontypines. Lazy bastards.
The Hahoos are a bit odd… they’re huge balloons with faces and they don’t really do much. Here they are anyway.
The last ‘characters’ in the Night Garden are actually modes of transport, but seem to be sentient somehow.
If the Pontypines are in homage to Postgate & Firmin, then the Pinky Ponk is surely a nod to another great creator of whimsical fantasy narrative, Hayao Miyazaki.
The trundling, noisesome airship could be straight from ‘Laputa’, or any of his flights of fancy. It does have a few scale issues – the main model is obviously only a couple of feet long and few attempts are made to make it look any bigger unless characters are boarding or disembarking it, but that all adds to the dream quality of the whole show.
The Ninky Nonk is a sort of train
That looks like somebody’s thrown a couple of dolls houses amongst a tea set and put wheels on it. Vi loves that it has different carriages for the different residents of the garden to sit in. The best way to fix the Ninky Nonk if it breaks down is to give it a kiss. Which is much faster and cheaper than fetching the RAC.
And that’s it – very basic, often repetitive stories are acted out by these characters in a constantly sun drenched wooded glade, as wood pigeons and blackbirds sing in the background. It always looks like an early summer evening in some gorgeous corner of Britain – the characters are surreal, but the idyllic calm is terribly everyday. After the story is played out, a set ‘bedtime’ routine for one of the characters begins, including their ‘bedtime story’ – a simplified recap of that episode’s adventure, told in picture book form. The whole thing is narrated by the wonderful Derek Jacobi. It uses a lot of nonsense-language but, unlike the show’s predecessor Teletubbies, never uses ‘baby-fied’ versions of real words. So it may encourage kids to talk gobbledegook, but at least it encourages them to speak it properly. Its repetitive nature can get very annoying for grown ups, but it really, truly isn’t meant for us. It’s a delight for the ankle biters. I have a house full of In The Night Garden merchandise to prove it.
Parent Factor - 7/10… a brilliant ½ hour distraction, but if you watch it too much you’ll go mad and start cooking up crazy ‘Life of Mars’ theories
Tot Factor - 10/10. They bloody love it.
I’ll probably dip into these as and when they take my fancy. As to where I should start, well… there’s only one place that I can start if I’m talking about modern toddler telly – with Violet’s – and almost every child her age’s - perennial favourite…
I have a feeling that In The Night Garden is destined to become Violet’s Generation’s ‘Bagpuss’ – even though, if you look at how they were made, they couldn’t be more different. Whereas Bagpuss was the creation of a couple of wonderful, whimsical animators pottering about in a shed in Kent, and feels as though it was all made up on the spot, Night Garden has a constant feeling of hyper-professionality beneath its outwardly fuzzy demeanour. I mean, I’m pretty sure that now, in the noughties, any Pre School show, especially one made for the BBC would be researched and marketed to within an inch of its life before the cameras ever start rolling. You can see it with most toddler’s telly and you can really see it with Night Garden. One thing that sets it apart from a lot of competitor shows, however, is that Night Garden has really, really got it right. Many toddler’s shows are already trying to tell the viewers what they want. Night Garden just delights. And that’s why I see it as a modern Bagpuss – Violet loves the slightly surreal, fluffy, largely mute inhabitants of the garden with the same warmth I felt as a small child for the toys in Emily’s Shop.
And weird characters they are. Shall we meet them?
The ‘protagonist’, if you can call him that, is Igglepiggle.
He is the only character present who is not, apparently, a natural inhabitant of ‘The Garden’, rather a nightly visitor. He appears to live instead on a tiny, uncovered yacht adrift on the ocean, and the stars above him turn into the garden as he falls asleep, which is the main reason why I’m convinced the whole show is a metaphor for death, and that Igglepiggle, Sam Tyler style, is having one final, lucid vision before the dehydration of being adrift for nights on end finishes him off.
I mean, that’s obviously not it – it’s obviously a wonderful dream world that he goes to before sinking into a deeper sleep. But I like to pretend. Anyway, Igglepiggle is entirely mute – able only to communicate through squeaking and ringing a bell in his foot. He falls down a lot, which might be because of his horribly deformed head.
Upsy Daisy is Violet’s favourite, and probably the favourite of most little girls, for obvious reasons.
She moves with very carefully observed ‘little girl’ mannerisms, likes pretty things, kissing, noisiness, and being just a little bit bossy. None of the Upsy Daisy Dollies for sale – including Vi’s – are anywhere close to as darkly skinned as the real Upsy Daisy is. The makers of the show have claimed that this is because ‘no characters are supposed to represent any human Race’, but, come on, Upsy Daisy is Black, Mixed Race at a push. Those are multicoloured dreadlocks on her head – they’re fooling no one. Why not admit that? I dunno.
The Tombliboos look a little like Upsy Daisy Young, being about 2/3 of Upsy Daisy and Igglepiggle’s height, but are apparently, different sorts of creatures. They are Un – the biggest, whose voice has, worryingly, already broken; Oo – the pink and brown one who is apparently male, and very greedy; and the very adorable Ee – a slightly clumsy female.
They live together in a Tardis-like bush and generally scamper about like naughty clowns. Their trousers fall down with startling regularity. I think they’re my favourite, especially Ee, who is adorable.
Makka Pakka used to creep me out a little. He’s about the size of a large cat compared to Igglepiggle, he lives in a cave under a bridge, he’s basically the Night Garden’s Caretaker… he’s like one of the Epsilon Caste from Brave New World.
He has a little wheelbarrow full of cleaning products that he trundles around with him… oh! And he’s Obsessive Compulsive. Cripplingly so. He spends most of his time cleaning stones that he finds and than arranging them in order. Got to be clean. Got to be in order. Stack it up one two three four order is good good good good one two three four order is good… you get the idea with that. Lolmentalillness.
Mind you, if you look at an 18 month old, say, and the way that they order some things, again it’s much likely to be more a case of them studying that aspect of toddlers’ behaviour. Vi still likes to line many of her toys up in an exact order and often makes the same little ‘checking it’s all straight’ hand gestures as Makka Pakka does. Makka Pakka has grown on me, but he’s still a bit odd.
Smallest of all are the Pontypines, who appear to be a pretty straight homage of Firmin and Postgate’s work.
Very simple, wooden puppets, capable only of nodding, jumping and raising their hands, they communicate with long, conversational sounding ‘mi-mi-mi’s that Vi loves to copy. Their simplicity and 1970s look (check out Mr Pontypine’s Tache) feels like a very reverential nod towards the shows that my generation grew up with. They’re the size of insects to Igglepiggle and live in an odd little suburbia all of their own next door to the almost identical but blue clad neighbours, the Wottingers. The Pontypine Parents are the Karen Matthews of the Night Garden world – they’ve got 8 kids and they’re forever losing them. The Wottingers have an equally large brood but don’t get out as much as the Pontypines. Lazy bastards.
The Hahoos are a bit odd… they’re huge balloons with faces and they don’t really do much. Here they are anyway.
The last ‘characters’ in the Night Garden are actually modes of transport, but seem to be sentient somehow.
If the Pontypines are in homage to Postgate & Firmin, then the Pinky Ponk is surely a nod to another great creator of whimsical fantasy narrative, Hayao Miyazaki.
The trundling, noisesome airship could be straight from ‘Laputa’, or any of his flights of fancy. It does have a few scale issues – the main model is obviously only a couple of feet long and few attempts are made to make it look any bigger unless characters are boarding or disembarking it, but that all adds to the dream quality of the whole show.
The Ninky Nonk is a sort of train
That looks like somebody’s thrown a couple of dolls houses amongst a tea set and put wheels on it. Vi loves that it has different carriages for the different residents of the garden to sit in. The best way to fix the Ninky Nonk if it breaks down is to give it a kiss. Which is much faster and cheaper than fetching the RAC.
And that’s it – very basic, often repetitive stories are acted out by these characters in a constantly sun drenched wooded glade, as wood pigeons and blackbirds sing in the background. It always looks like an early summer evening in some gorgeous corner of Britain – the characters are surreal, but the idyllic calm is terribly everyday. After the story is played out, a set ‘bedtime’ routine for one of the characters begins, including their ‘bedtime story’ – a simplified recap of that episode’s adventure, told in picture book form. The whole thing is narrated by the wonderful Derek Jacobi. It uses a lot of nonsense-language but, unlike the show’s predecessor Teletubbies, never uses ‘baby-fied’ versions of real words. So it may encourage kids to talk gobbledegook, but at least it encourages them to speak it properly. Its repetitive nature can get very annoying for grown ups, but it really, truly isn’t meant for us. It’s a delight for the ankle biters. I have a house full of In The Night Garden merchandise to prove it.
Parent Factor - 7/10… a brilliant ½ hour distraction, but if you watch it too much you’ll go mad and start cooking up crazy ‘Life of Mars’ theories
Tot Factor - 10/10. They bloody love it.
