One of the delusions I laboured under as a neophyte father was that we would be able to avoid using the idiot box to keep young Thomas entertained. He would, I thought, gladly spend hours playing with a ball tied to a stick, sit in rapt attention while his father read improving passages from a big book, and then compose naive yet poignant haiku with his letter blocks before wending his way exhausted to bed.
Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to have turned out like that. Soon you realise that, short of high-powered drugs, the only way to get five minutes of peace for pity’s sake is to turn on the telly.
Cbeebies of course, not any of the low-class kid’s telly. We’re not monsters.
And we always try to sit and watch with him, so it’s not just acting as an inert rectangular babysitter. But it does mean that after your hundredth or so sing-along to “Goodbye Sun, Hello Moon” you start to form some pretty intense opinions about the BBC’s tot-telly output.
So starting here are my potted reviews of some of the best, and worst, of Cbeebies.
Numberjacks
Dross, utter dross. I think Numberjacks was some kind of schools programme that was rejected for awfulness, and got shunted onto Cbeebies as filler. The “concept” is that a bunch of sentient numbers live inside a sofa for no adequately explained reason, and solve vaguely maths-related crimes.
Every episode follows this exact same pattern: something weird happens. The numberjacks send out one of their crew (chosen arbitrarily, as they seem to have no distinguishing personalities whatsoever) to investigate. The chosen number works out what’s happening. One of them gets inside a magical machine called, I think, “Brain Gain” and commands the weird thing that’s happening to stop happening. The end.
Every bloody episode. Rubbish.
Grandpa in my Pocket
Jason Mason is a horribly middle-class child from a horribly middle-class family. He has floppy hair and a face that’s going to start letting him down at about 17. His grandpa is an ageing Likely Lad who has for no adequately explained reason a cap that makes him small.
Now, you’d think that a man with this ability would use it for the greater good. Solving crimes or entertaining children or something. No, in every episode Grandpa uses the shrinking cap for the good of one person only: Grandpa.
Each episode something happens that vaguely threatens Grandpa’s cushy number lounging around being waited on hand-and-foot by his horribly middle-class family. He then, despite the protestations of Jason, proceeds to use his shrinking cap to restore the status quo.
By pretending to be a talking doll, causing his hapless victim to run away screaming. Every bloody episode. Rubbish.
In The Night Garden
The people involved in this programme should be rounded up and shot.
Oh yeah, er, the good stuff… um… basically anything with Justin Fletcher in it. Seriously, the man straddles toddler entertainment like colossus.
