The Best Kids TV Shows Ever !!!!!

 

1. “Boy from Space” - “Look and Read” :  This was a popular TV show in the 80’s that kids would watch at about 11 am each day as a break from class.  The host Wordey was a legless red faced little man who would fly around chanting “Magic Magic E”.  Nobody realised at the time that he was a pioneering drug pusher getting ready for the era of raves.  “Boy From Space” was one of the stories featured in the show and it revolved around a couple of alien kids who looked like the children of the damned but with blue suits that appeared to be made from tissue paper and a language that only the teacher from Charlie Brown could imitate.  The actual episodes were all of 5 minutes long at the end of each “Look and read” segment and sci-fi obsessed kids all over Britain waited with baited breath each week for the latest fun installment.  The “Dark Towers” story was also a classic but the little lad from the stars was the pick of the bunch.

2.”Newsround”: with John Craven:  It may seem odd to highlight a kids news show as being a cult TV classic but the sad reality is that Craven and his sidekicks produced a 10 minute show containing more real news items than you’d see after a year of watching Fox and or MSNBC today.  I particularly liked the endless reports on giant Panda’s and space shuttle launches. 

 3.”The Flumps”:  Long before that northern bloke was winning Oscars for dull films about Wallace and his dog the BBC had set the standard for animation with “The Flumps”  This was easily the best show of its genre and one of the all time classic moments of television was when Grandpa flump got stuck in his Flumpaphone.

4.”Mr Benn” :  This guy was the ultimate master of disguise.  Every week he went to some kind of fancy dress shop and disappeared through the dressing room into many weird and wonderful places.  He tried his hand at being everything from a cowboy to a clown but his real brilliance was in his ability to persuade the shopkeeper to let him keep trying on costumes all the time without ever buying a single item from the store. 

5.”The A-Team”:  In this era of cheesy remakes I am surprised that no one has decided to make a big screen version of the greatest US TV show of all time : The A-Team.  I bet George Clooney would like a stint as Hannibal alongside Jim Carey as Murdoch and perhaps Di Caprio as Face.  BA would be harder to cast but perhaps DMX would be the man for the job and it would be the kind of thing that could lead to at least 3 or 4 sequels which is right up Clooneys alley. 

6. “Tim Tyler “(aka Timm Thaler) :  This was a German classic about a kid whose laugh was stolen by an evil Baron in 1970’s Berlin (?)  The show was great because the worst sound editors in the history of television hired some drunk B movie actors to dub it into English and during the whole series not one word was uttered by a character in English at the same time his mouth was in motion.  Aside from the cheap production this show was also memorable for the flairs and hippie hairstyles that defined an otherwise forgettable era.

7. “Degrassi Junior High” :  This was Canada’s answer to Grange Hill and was so terrible that it was actually  good for its utter patheticness.  I remember that one episode caused a stir as it featured the revelation that one of the teachers was a lesbian before the old BBC watershed.  Oddly enough the BBC didn’t buy a lot of shows from the land where people say “aye” after the ratings for this one were compiled but I still have a soft spot for it.

8.”Silas”: The people who dubbed this Polish gem into English did a marginally better job than their counterparts had done with Tim Tyler but the real issue was the fact that phrases that take about two syllables to say in English take 5 minutes to say in Polish and vice versa.  I remember that Silas was harrased by an nefarious harridan who was known simply as “The Old Shrew”.  I can’t remember the plot of the show but basically it involved around a kid riding around on a horse and every  week it had the same cliffhanger ending as he crossed paths with his nemesis and he exclaimed “the shrew”  Brilliant !

9. “Airwolf”: Some people may remember Ernest Borgnine as the Roman soldier at the foot of the cross or as the cop who married a hooker in “The Poseidon Adventure” but I remember him most fondly as the pilot of the best helicopter ever built, Airwolf.  This show had a simple message:  Criminals beware of copters loaded to the brim with machine guns because no matter where you run Ernie will blow your head off.  This was much better than anything you’ll see on CSI, eat your heart out David Caruso.

10. “Neighbours”: Not technically a kids show but try telling that to anyone who grew up in the UK in the late eighties.  So many kids were skipping school to watch this Aussie classic that the BBC moved it to the 5.30 spot after “Blue Peter” which had usually been reserved for shows like “Doctor Who” or “Friday film: The Glitterball.”  I was skiving off school in 1987 when the first episode was broadcast and after I saw Max Ramsey lose his temper, Des fall for stripper Daphne and Shane introduce the southern hemisphere to the mullet there was no looking back.

Doctor Who and the fake TARDIS

It is really sad that I am now old enough to talk in terms of things that happened twenty five years ago.   I was about 5 years old and Britain was in the grip of Thatcherism.  The football team were terrible and Michael Foot was making secret plans for Britain to join the Warsaw pact.  Times were hard for a 5 year old with ginger hair and a black school coat growing up in an era when duracell commercials ran on TV round the clock and gave bullies the great idea of associating me with the batteries slogan about “The copper coloured top.”  School was awful as we had a 2 foot tall four hundred year old Italian woman teaching us who could barely speak English and loved to smack us around with her mini ruler.  All in all it was pretty bloody miserable. 

The one bright spot in my life was sitting down in front of the TV each week to catch the latest installment of my favourite show “Doctor Who.”  As you can imagine it came as quite a surprise when my Dad announced suddenly that I was going to miss a day of school so that I could go to London and meet the “Doctor” in person.   I assumed that the Doctor had come to Earth specifically to meet me and it wasn’t until about 5 years later that I put the pieces together and realised that it wasn’t real.  My Dad worked in PR for the Post Office and the powers that be decided to have a letter writing competition for kids.  To launch the campaign they would take a picture of a youngster delivering mail to the Timelord and my Dad savvy as he was managed to land that role for me. 

It was always exciting to go to London but to meet my favourite TV star was something else.  The event was held at Hendon Police college where the Met train most of their bobbies.   The reason they chose Hendon was because there were actual Police boxes there which could easily pass for a TARDIS as far as most people were concerned.  I on the other hand wasn’t deceived.  The real TARDIS was bigger on the inside than the outside and furthermore it didn’t have any windows whereas this police box had two.  I tried to explain this to Nigel Fitt a fellow from my Dads work who accompanied me for the day.  He was one of those kind of guys who had a deep voice, curly dark hair, wore gold chains and smoked Cuban cigars.  He wasn’t a kid kind of guy and seemed to think that a wink and a pat on the head would make everything OK.  Not ruddy likely.  I was insistent that the “TARDIS” was not the actual Time travelling machine from the television show.  The poor old postman was probably wondering how he got roped into this gig with a whiny kid when the star of the moment arrived.  To most people he was known as actor Peter Davison.  As far as I was concerned he was “Doctor Who.”  Initially I was a little annoyed with him when he also tried to claim that the cheap replica police box was his actual time machine but after a while I accepted his story about disguising it from people.  The cameraman eventually told us to get into position and pose for our publicity shots.  I remember that it was really hard to focus because hundreds of trainee policemen started to gather around us.  Their instructor was angrily ordering them back into class but they were obviously Who fans and massed around the TimeLord trying to get into the snaps.  Anyone who didn’t know what was going on could have been forgiven for thinking that they had stumbled across a “Z cars” convention as the young coppers in their smart new blue Met issue sweaters gathered around. 

Once we had taken the snapshots the Doctor asked us if we wanted a ride back to the Post Office HQ where my Dad worked.  Naturally we agreed as it’s not every day that you get chauffeured around by an alien/TV actor (depending on your point of view).  His car was amazing.  It had all kinds of digital displays and gadgets in it and it was blue !  OK that sounds pretty lame now but in 1982 any car with cushy seats and a radio was pretty flashy.  For me it was a nice change to ride around in a car other than my Dads beaten up old brown Ford Cortina.  You’ve heard of people leaving a trail of exhaust fumes as they jet off on vacation well never mind the fumes our family would leave the actual exhaust pipe behind when we left town.  That old car was a piece of junk but this car was something else.  It was the nearest thing to KIT on Knight Rider I had ever encountered and it seemed to travel at supersonic speed through the grizzly streets of London.  Sadly though it was time to say goodbye and the good Doctor left myself and my companions outside Post office HQ in London. 

That was the last time I ever saw him but even worse it was the last time anyone would see that car.  The following day cricketer Ian Botham borrowed it to use in a charity car race.  Botham evidently wasn’t the greatest of drivers and he smashed it up.  I was furious when I heard about the crash on the news and I never watched a game of cricket again in protest.  In fairness I was on the lookout for a reason to avoid Britains dullest tradition anyway but I still can’t look at Botham without thinking about how he destroyed the Doctors car.  The sad thing is that my Mum who was a grown adult at the time also holds a grudge against Botham but then again she is the same person who claimed that Roman soldiers lived in our kitchen !

Barbie’s new squeeze : Jon Bon Jovi

McFarlane toys recently announced that they are to release a new line of Bon Jovi action figures. After years of being overlooked by the toy manufacturing industry the greatest rock band of all time will soon be found in nurseries around the nation. As a long time Bon Jovi fan my delight at this news is tinged with a little sadness that nobody thought of doing this twenty years ago ! It was in about 1983 while riding the school bus home that I realised “Living on a Prayer” was the finest piece of music ever recorded and twenty four years later my opinion has not changed. I am going to be camping out at Walmart the night before the mini Jovi’s are released so I can buy one for my daughter and each of my nephews. When I was a youngster a little JBJ and Richie would have been the perfect addition to my toy cupboard. Just imagine if I had been able to play with them alongside the A-Team men I had ? For one thing the A-team van is your stereotypical amp transporting type of vehicle and for another thing have you ever seen two guys who look more like roadies than B.A. and Murdoch ? Hannibal would have been an ideal manager for the band although Face would have had to find a new home as there is only room for one pretty boy in the group.

I can imagine the fun I would have had when I was simulating Red Leaders unsuccessful x-wing fighter attack on the death star if JBJ was there to sing a dying tribute as the fat spaceman went down in a blaze of glory. Skeletors Castle Grey Skull would have been an awesome location for the mini rockers to do a gig and Barbies pool party an ideal destination in my sisters room for the after show party. I always hoped that the day would come when I could get my own Bon Jovi for ten bucks and for the last 25 years I have just tried to keep the faith.