“The Kids Are Alright”
This week’s Doctor Who article is being published on Sunday, not Friday, as it’s tying into something. So today, instead of that, here’s something else. It’s not about Doctor Who but is, if you like, Who-adjacent. A few years ago a magazine I was writing for decided to do a “Kids’ TV week”. This article on the decline, in quantity, rather than quality, in TV drama for children, was commissioned and paid for, but never ran, because the whole idea of the issue was postponed, rethought and then abandoned. Think of it as an exclusive. Or bin-diving. Up to you. Either way it’s free, and I thought was worth putting out as an optional extra, in addition to the weekly Who pieces, not instead of one of them. Especially as, as you’ll see when and if you read it, the topic is such that everything it discusses is well on the way to being a matter of historical curiosity only.
Children’s television is easily distorted in common memory by nostalgia. It’s obvious really that the half-watched entertainments of childhood, when we experience time differently, should become half-remembered, details obscured by the passage of years. It’s why no one believes Bagpuss ran only for one series. Things look different when you’re a child.
The recent Radio Times Children’s Television Special was criticised for exactly this sort of nostalgic bent, by concentrating on programmes from the schooldays of the oldest baby boomers to the youngsters of Generation X, rather than on programmes made for the children of now. That’s fair too. Bagpuss is a kind of masterpiece. So are Mr Benn and The Box of Delights, but there is plenty of great children’s television being made in the UK in the second decade of this century.
Horrible Histories is a better, cleverer attempt at what it is than anything television has offered before. Hacker T Dog is one of children’s television’s great creations. Even modern remakes and sequels, such as the revivals of Clangers and Dangermouse, The Worst Witch and even Thunderbirds match or exceed the earlier versions. Don’t let anyone tell you that UK children’s television isn’t in very good shape. It is. Well, except in one, key area: Original Drama. More specifically, Original Drama on CITV.