Lovely videos

[Bruce Sato]

Being mildly migrained and unable to concentrate on work, I have spent the evening looking for / at old children's TV on Youtube. I wasn't the demographic for Playbus / Playdays (being 8 when it started), and was actually rather annoyed that they got rid of Play School, but I am still rather happy to find that the first few episodes (and many more) have been uploaded to Youtube by someone who worked on them.

First playlist
Second playlist

I remember the original version of the theme, and the Why Bird's excellent irritating song at the start, and the violin-playing Dot, and of course Wobble the terrifying unkillable clown.

About 300 episodes of Rainbow have shown up on Youtube as well, which is nowhere near the total (around 1100 if memory serves) but is still enough to provide a representative sample. I remember the set changing c. 1984 and then changing back again (more or less) c. 1987.

Rather less survives of Allsorts, which wasn't as good as Rainbow anyway - but the very first episode is on Youtube. Everything about Allsorts made much more sense when I found out that the script editor was Russell T. Davies.

I wonder how many of the live action magazine-type programmes still survive in archives somewhere. Not that we'll ever be allowed to see Going Live again.

[dng]

i don't think i remember playbus at all

[dng]

obviously i was too old by then (10)

[dng]

although i do remember the music, so maybe i wasn't too old after all

[blombluss]

A hearty Yo! for that lovely Children's BBC logo, made using an actual BBC Model B computer, meaning that kids didn't have to witness the horrors of ZX colour clash 48k until later in life.

[blombluss]

I hardly saw anything of Rainbow, as we were a staunch BBC hicehold, and mother didn't like me seeing the adverts, as I would nag her to death for pretty much anything that appeared on the screen!

[blombluss]

Also: whenever I see the Why Bird, I immediately think of Histor's Eye!

[Pual]

Egg… he said egg

[endar]

I remember Playbus and I remember not liking it simply because it wasn't Playschool

[Bruce Sato]

I think Histor and Pliny were genuinely inspired by the crow on Saturday Superstore:


We were mostly BBC, by habit rather than policy, but we'd watch ITV as well. I have the idea that ITV's lunchtime children's TV slot was longer than the BBC one, which may have played a part. Children's BBC didn't achieve its full form till about 1985 with the advent of Schofield and the Broom Cupboard.

My sister is 6 years younger, which extended my viewing of the programmes aimed at younger childer, and also extended my watching of children's TV into the early 2000s. The flipside of that is that she ended up watching programmes that were on when she was a tiny or completely nonexistent (such as Bagpuss) via video / DVD. Now she is indoctrinating my niece in these delights. The latest success is with Popeye, although most of the ones on this channel are admittedly awful.

[dng]

popeye is such a baffling creation

[dng]

its kind of odd something so weird was so popular for so long

[dng]

and then suddenly never mentioned again

[blombluss]

Some of the visual effects in Popeye the Sailor meets Sindbad the Sailor (1936)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVISNThhLQU

Are really quite swish.

I think the Fleischer Brothers used models for some of the backgrounds to achieve a more 3D-ish look.

[dng]

Yeah, that ones wonderful (but still obviously baffling)

[blombluss]

I like the episode where Olive Oyl presses spinach into the Popeseye.

[endar]

he was based on a real person apparently. Is this generally known?

https://wow.uscgaux.info/content.php?un ... e-real-man

[dng]

i did not know that

[dng]

i assumed he was based on absolutely every sailor ever simultaneously

[blombluss]

Has anyone seen the 1980 film? It looks like an interesting curio, but not interesting enough for me to watch the bally thing in it's entirety.

[dng]

I saw it when I was a teenager and was suitably baffled by it

[dng]

But still the only good Robin Williams film

[blombluss]

I've only ever seen Williams in one film - The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. I thought it'd be more than that, but after checking Wikipedia, nope, that's the only one.

[endar]

Good Morning Vietnam is great filum

[dng]

Its ten years ago today he died, so now I feel bad for moaning about him

[endar]

i done a laug at this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClcwKgxu2wk

[blombluss]

90s indie music and journalism/presenting nailed good and proper!

[dng]

Nice

[endar]

shtup

[CandyDarling]

I didn't actually realise that there were families who refused to watch ITV until I was about 20. As a kid I remember mainly watching ITV, but also the other three channels got frequent look-ins too.

I do remember Playbus, and the way it replaced Play School. I got to see a fair bit of Playbus on account of my younger sister. Apparently there were loads of kids who were inexplicably scared of "Dot", so she was dropped from the following series!

I also recall making up a vague "comedy routine" at school about the Playbus driver in the titles - whose animated hands were the only thing you ever saw of him - having a heart attack while driving, and crashing and killing everyone, because that was the kind of child I was.

Here's the last version of the Play School credits from 1987 (preceded by two interminable minutes of Andy Crane):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Kx9GMXhht0