Attention kids' TV lovers! I've just read Anne Wood's article about the uncertain future, and the bad news is: TV companies are finding content for the algorithm much easier to produce, wheras now everyone finds British kids' TV shows which define creative risks hard to do with so much money out of the bank!
*Crowd gasps in horror*
But don't worry, some classics have managed to defy the creative risks in different and amazing ways, from those classic dramas families can enjoy together to gentle, kind preschool shows that'll calm young viewers today. 10 of these, for example, defy these risks, and here they are in person:
1.Teletubbies, as seen above, manages to mix a boundaryless world of fun and learning with a sense of calm and relaxation, allowing toddlers to grow and develop at a calm steady pace. The show uses a mixture of giant costume puppets, animatronic robots, real life documentary footage and CGI to enhance the entertainment, and the learning experience.
2.Filmfair's Paddington series took British children's animation a next step forward by mixing one stop motion, cuddly teddy from Darkest Peru with paper cutout backgrounds and characters.
3.Brum, the '90s series, has an animatronic model car as a character, and uses silent human characters and miming, accompanied by gentle, motherly narration, to surprisingly touch the hearts of toddlers watching with their parents.
4.Thunderbirds may look like an average British '60s marionette series, but its combination of proper English dialogue, diverse range of accents - most notably American accents for the Tracy Brothers, Brains and Jeff Tracy, truly British accents for Lady Penelope and Parker and Malaysian accents for Tin Tin Kyrano and her father, simply named Kyrano - and mind-blowing special effects by Derek Meddings made it a low-stimulating yet high stakes classic, enjoyed by kids and adults alike.
5.The BBC's Narnia series defied how all classic children's book adaptations should be made, not with CGI or expensive special effects, but with a mixture of puppets, live actors and traditionally animated creatures - something Disney dared not do when they made their adaptation.
6.Spot, based on the books by Eric Hill, took out the high stakes and action-filled, problem-focused narratives and just focused on stream of conciousness stories focusing on the life of a boy Spot's age as he goes around playing new games and meeting new friends.
7.Kipper, another cartoon dog, took the low stakes, soothing narratives to a whole new level in the late '90s, combining slice of life stories and chilled out characters with some rather surreal and fantastical storylines that don't just rely on quests and high stakes, as mentioned with Spot. Instead, it relies on exploration and discovery, something all preschool shows should inherit, including Bluey.
8.The 2002 version of Andy Pandy brought back the storytelling formula long forgotten by kids' TV back then, making the visualised characters silent in order for the narrator, Mr Tom Conti, to express what they're saying to the young viewers watching and describe how they communicate in their world without speaking at all, proving even in the early 2000's, art is a simple form of communication for children who are deaf mute.
9.The Wheels On The Bus does what Cocomelon does, only in a slow paced, low stimulating, truly British manner. Its smooth, lesser detailed CGI and enjoyable songs, plus gentle narration by Dawn French and enjoyable eye candy, provided an entirely different way for kids to enjoy their favourite nursery rhymes while enjoying some originally written songs.
10.And last but not least, we have In The Night Garden, a soothing bedtime experience for children which mixes giant costume puppet characters which the youngest target audience can see themselves in with stop motion and inflatable prop characters and digitally enhanced CGI and special effects to demonstrate to even weary parents the transformative power about how play and toddler development can wind young children down at the end of a busy day. And during the time it was made, Ragdoll was as successful with that as it was with Teletubbies years ago.
But now...it's all gone.
With algorithm making shows easier to produce and kids' TV drawing kids' attention rather than telling them stories, with a demand for more overseas programmes to get them watching channels as a cow produces babies to produce more milk or our cornflakes.
And if today's loud, overstimulating overseas shows are a cow's babies, kids of today are the milk, once pure and fresh, turning stinky and curdled with every single attention-grabbing channel, show or Youtube video they watch. So those baby calves who are making the ratings plummet need us. They need us to get the BBC and ITV to make more programmes that'll nurture kids' minds in the low stimulating, risk-defying format and styles we've so long lost to CGI and special effects.
So, in honor of this, we give this risk-defying, calming, collected era a minute's silence. Cue the music, please...😢
