When I were a nipper, toddler's TV was confined to half an hour a day of what was known, in those pre-The Female Eunuch days, as Watch With Mother. There we sat, with Mother, transfixed as wooden puppets dangling from visible strings like Andy Pandy and The Woodentops cavorted with limp inanity. Then we went into the garden to play with a stick.
Today, toddler's TV has expanded into an entire televisual universe - the CBeebies channel alone affords 13 solid hours of viewing per day and features some 60 or 70 programmes. Repeats of the late, lamented Balamory are broadcast first at about 8pm and then at midday, when its student following is rising from bed, hungry for the sub-text of rampant innuendo that lurks beneath its disingenuously sexless surface. For those charged with minding pre-schoolers, however, it has become a more reluctant subculture. It raises all kinds of questions. What's going on between Justin and Sarah-Jane living together in Higgledy House? Why does cuddly old Aunty Mabel (Lynda "Nurse Gladys" Baron) in Come Outside start each episode with a rustic "'Ello, me dears!" before instantly relapsing into impeccably cut-glass Rada tones? Why do the characters in Me Too entrust their children in the care of a woman called Granny Murray who is actually 36 years old? The CBeebies message board is supposed to be a forum for adults riled into a state of intolerable inquisitiveness by their programmes but unfortunately, "inappropriate" questions are barred, which constitutes about 50% of their traffic.
The latest addition to the CBeebies roster is perhaps its most confounding creation to date. Co-devised by Anne Wood, responsible for Teletubbies, In The Night Garden features soft, toylike characters with names such as the Tombliboos, Makka Pakka and the Pontipines, who resemble miniature soldiers of the Tsarist era sleeping in matchboxes and has a lava lamp-like logic all of its own. As these creatures caper endlessly, free of the surly bonds of narrative and sense, playing with their blocks or riding the Ninky Nonk train - time itself seems to take on an elastic quality, the tedium levels prompting near out-of-body experiences. The whole thing is narrated by Sir Derek Jacobi, who is either entering some advanced state of senility or is simply grateful for the work. My two-year-old loves it. However, I worry that an entire generation will turn to LSD in adulthood as they hunger for the halcyon, psychedelic, cathode bliss they're presently enjoying as tots with In The Night Garden, and yearn to revisit. I might bring this up on the CBeebies message board.
