You should see the state of Saturday morning TV right now. It is abject. Just look at what was on last week: Big Bang Theory repeats, a 77-year-old film and acres of the sort of chummy cookery shows designed to stop nursing home inmates from uprising.
But hope is on the horizon. This Saturday, for the first time since 2009, there will be a live children’s entertainment programme back on terrestrial BBC television. Depending on your age, Saturday Mash-Up! promises to rouse long-dormant memories of Dick and Dom, Live and Kicking, Going Live, Saturday Superstore or Multi-Coloured Swap Shop. Two hosts and a puppet presiding over carefully-managed chaos on a channel you don’t need a box to watch. It’s just like the old days.
“We like to think that anything can happen on this show, except cookery,” says series producer Jamie Wilson. “There’ll be celebrities in the studio, games that kids can phone in and play. Competitions.”
“There’s gonna be gunge!” interrupts Yasmin Evans, one of the show’s hosts. Before she can expand, her co-presenter Jonny Nelson barges in. “There’s been a dangerous lack of gunging on terrestrial television. We had a meeting about it, decided something had to be done, and this seems like the sensible option. It’s a really successful format that ran for decades, that generations of people grew up with …”
“It’s unoriginal!” barks Hacker T Dog, the puppet who’ll round out the presenting trio. And this is what it’s like to interview the Saturday Mash-Up team; they giggle, they fight, they finish each others’ sentences. In short, they seem perfect for this sort of show.
The weirdest thing about Saturday Mash-Up! – always referred to with its Aronofskyesque exclamation mark – is how radical it feels. Children’s programming has been cloistered away for so long, confined to its own dedicated submenu of channels. The fact that Saturday Mash-Up! will be in a place where it might be watched by kids, parents, students and adults alike seems especially bold.
“BBC2 is a catchment channel,” says Jonny. “I think there’s going to be a lot of families, a lot of the older generation, who’ll just switch on and see it. It makes for a much broader audience.”
“It’s going to be very new, very loud and very ridiculous,” adds Jamie.
“And I’m on it,” says Hacker. “The dads like me.”
Saturday morning television should be loud and brash. Think the Phantom Flan Flinger, or Dec’s weekly Wonky Donkey meltdown, or any of Dick and Dom’s extraordinarily tense rounds of Bogies.
Luckily, the Saturday Mash-Up! team understand this. “We’re looking forward to the chaos of live television,” says Jonny. Yasmin butts in: “That’s the stuff that shows your personality. I don’t want it to be robotic and stiff. Obviously the first show is going to be ARRRGH, but the more relaxed we are, the more slip-ups that happen, the more people at home can relate.”
Jamie expands. “When you think back to classic Saturday morning pairings, it’s the presenters you remember first and foremost … more than any other format, Saturday morning TV relies on that chemistry. And things will go wrong; it’s two hours with not much rehearsal. But viewers should have the confidence that we can laugh it off. We’ll embrace the chaos.”
It helps that they have Hacker T Dog on their side, who has transparently been hired as the programme’s agent of disruption. He’s what Shane Richie was to Run the Risk, what Trevor and Simon were to Going Live; a grenade ready to go. His CBBC show Hacker Time was a masterpiece, a firecracker through a letterbox, and it seems like he’s ready to bring that sensibility to Saturday Mash-Up!
Neither Yasmin nor Jonny are practised kids’ presenters – she’s a Radio 1Xtra DJ, he’s one of the people who pop up during Jurassic Park on ITV2 to deliver showbiz news – but they both seem at ease with the task ahead.
They’re cheeky (when I compare a new “kids send in stuff” segment called Make Me Viral to Tony Hart’s gallery, they pounce on what a fogeyish reference it is) but keen to express how seriously they’re taking the job. “It’s a sign of intent from the BBC to bring us in and create something different,” says Jonny.
Their air of eager sincerity is a good thing. For all the talk of fragmented audiences and non-linear viewing, Saturday morning TV disappeared because it lost its way. In the dying days, female presenters appeared to be chosen for their lads’ mag appeal; let’s not forget the toe-curling BBC headline heralding Dani Behr’s appointment as host of 2001’s The Saturday Show: “I’ll make Saturday sexy”. Meanwhile, find any episode of SM:TV Live on YouTube and you’ll be taken aback by all the knowing adult laughter you hear behind the scenes.
Saturday Mash-Up! will be a more wholesome throwback. It won’t be completely innocent – they know hungover students will make up a fair proportion of their audience – but they won’t lose sight that this is still a kid’s show.
Simply by airing on BBC2, Saturday Mash-Up! could create a truly collective event. My generation will always be bonded by our ability to instantly recall Live & Kicking’s telephone number – 081 811 8181. If Saturday Mash-Up! can draw its audience away from Netflix for long enough to make them take notice, it might create something just as indelible.
Saturday Mash-Up! starts on 30 September on BBC2 at 9am.
