Small Screen Surfin'
Created | Updated Sep 16, 2004
Well what can I say on SSS' intro this week? Well nothing really... except that this is Small Screen Surfin' number 50. Wow, two more weeks and there's a year's worth of absolutely redundant
A-pages! Anyway, our reader last week1 will remember that I mentioned something on a Postman Pat rant. Well I hope they do if only because it's in part the editor's duty to check that I'm not saying anything like 'Down with h2g2' and the like. So therefore I have to have some sort of rant which refers to Postman Pat, so I will. Lets-a-go:
Children's TV seems to be entering Bizarro World these days. Uber political correctness while the characters say next to nil in English. Schedules seems to be flipping around as well. Why does the BBC
now have the rights to showing Rosie and Jim and Tots TV? Throughout the 90s it seemed like those programmes were what CITV lived off of! So for the really young kiddies these days the choice seems be either watch:
Option 1 - Patronising adults and/or coloured talking shapes.
Option 2 - Repeat the old favourites until They can find a way to turn that format to include Option 1.
A good example of Option 2 could be the Thunderbirds movie and dear gods, Thomas and the Magic Railroad. I've seen the Noddy animation which got turned into this: Link. Why oh why was The Adventures of Spot turned into Spot's Musical Adventures
voiced by Jane Horrocks of all people?? Yes very educational kids, Spot sounds like he wants a sex
change, he's already had the hormone treatment!
This new series of Postman Pat has a new theme tune. Okay, fair enough but why when
the original 80s series has been shown never-ending until the start of the new series? The mouths move
now despite still being voiced by the same guy. Why? And Jess the Cat gets far more screen
time than he ever had before... and They seem to think he needs to meow a lot more these
days.
Perhaps this is too nostalgic but why change something which worked? It certainly hasn't been made
better! Especially when the original was just as successful when first shown as it is in 2004. For a time
which is supposed to be a lot more liberal than it was under Margaret Thatcher, TV seems to have a lot
more rules than ever before!
In children's TV, fun must have education but education doesn't have to be fun. It's pitiful,
especially when political correctness is at the most farcical it can get.
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Moving on (since I'm not sure there was actually a point to all that) people might be interested to
know that Star Wars: Clone Wars is being re-ran as a 'full length feature' of all 20 chapters
this Saturday. My original comments on the series lie around in the SSS archive here.
Byker Grove the Newcastle based kiddies drama is back. I encourage everyone to watch it
as a sit-com since I'm sure Egon can verify that it is nothing like what the North East is like in
actuality. Oh the hilarity.
And now the Small Screen Supplement!
I love it when a link comes together... Shame this didn't: A-Team. Remember, I, SSS, The Post and bbci are not responsible for corrupted downloads or content through external links. Nor does this site take responsibility for those trying to recapture
their youth through listening to this week's theme.
Keep Surfin'!
