While I am quick to wax lyrical about the greatness of children's television, which incidentally was quite definitely NOT better in our day, there are many which cause great upset at their sheer awfulness.
Top of the list: In the Night Garden. Aaaaargh. Babies love this. Preschoolers and parents who have watched it for 4 years don't. They used to. They gradually went off the episodes with headache inducing noise clashes, then got fed up by constant repeats, then got mildly psychotic at the sight of any of it. Trippy, weird and more than immensely annoying, it's on every single day and has totally usurped Teletubbies which is superior in every way. Pah! Babies love it. Merchandise is expansive.
Balamory and Me Too!, which are the same programme with slight differences like the name and location. Intensely annoying and starring simpletons. Garish songs and most annoying of all, a hatable main character. Balamory has the perky and punchable Miss Hoolie; Me Too! has the abominable "come on in Honey Pie" 35 year old Granny Murray. Nauseous doesn't even begin to cover it.
The Wiggles: never have 4 perky Australians been so annoying. And Australian* children's presenters generally do a great line in being annoying and perky while singing twee songs. But the Wiggles do it worst, and add an additional element of campness to complete the joy. The only thing worse than the Wiggles is Barney and, thank the lord, that is not broadcast here.
*they may be Kiwi. While I normally care lots to find out, I can't stomach them long enough to suss the accent, and if I listened too hard I'd start fancying the Wiggles and that would be so so very wrong.
Imagination Movers is a cross between the Wiggles and the Monkees if you remove all elements that were good in the Monkees. I don't know/care what the story is but the gist is 4 men in overalls singing a lot accompanied by an annoying side cast.
Yo Gabba Gabba is what you would get if you took neon pink, green and orange, fed them too much Haribo and made them into a TV programme. Noise! Bright colours! Shouting! Ohmygodwhatisthis?!! It has a very bright! and jolly! man and his made up bright! and jolly! world with bright! and loud! toy things and it's so very bright! and shouty! and wheeeeee!!!!! and it gives you a headache. It is intravenous hyperactivity.
And of course there is the Cartoon Network in its entirety which is just A Noise interspersed with shouty adverts for crap things.
What's the story in Balamory? Nobody gives a toss.
Wednesday 17 February 2010
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I remember an appalling episode of Balamory where Edie McReady got all Daily Mail and made the judgement that the fact that people were dropping litter was the fault of the sweet shop, rather than the litterers, and she took a load of litter in and dumped it on the counter with a very ugly self-righteous look upon her face. The idiots in the shop politely accepted that she was totally right.
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