Hey Duggee!

Channel: CBeebies

Running Time: 7 minutes

Date: 2014- present

Early spoiler: this show is much, much better than it looks...

Premise: A series of anthropomorphic animal characters regularly attend a kind of after-school/day care style club: The Squirrel Club (though it appears that few, if any actual squirrels attend). Said club is run by the eponymous hero, Duggee, a large cuddly dog who only ever says 'Woof!', but has obtained the requisite paperwork to look after a number of young children in a variety of indoor and outdoor settings. Imagine Hodor as a Cub Scout Leader, and you're about there.

The Clubhouse: building and owner presumably up-to-date with all current Ofsted requirements

Each episode, the Squirrels earn a badge of some kind, related to the activity or challenge or problem that has been thrown their way in that episode. Some are more mainstream (the Drawing Badge, the Rescue Badge and the We Love Animals Badge), some are quite niche (the Omelette Badge, the Dancing Bug Badge) and some are just so 21st century (the Yoga Badge). Yet to be confirmed for series three are the Brexit-Means-Brexit Badge, the Safe-Sexting Badge, the Fidget-Spinner Badge, and the badge for big fans of 1990s episodes of Neighbours (the Madge Badge).

Some of the badges available to the Squirrels; also a range of attractive yet affordable coasters.

A cast of regular and minor characters keep things fresh and bouncy, such as the hippy Rabbits, and my personal favourites, the gangster mice (catchphrase upon departing a scene "Let's Bounce!", popularised in an early draft of Romeo and Juliet; Shakespeare eventually went with "Hence, be gone, away!")

The animation is minimalist but colourful; the plots are imaginative without slipping into 'zany', or zany's idiot cousin, 'wacky'; and the voice talent ranges from the subtle youngsters (learn a lesson, Bing), to the instantly recognisable (Alexander Armstrong, currently running out of digits to place into so many pies).

Background: Creator Grant Orchard of Studio AKA explains a lot in this comprehensive interview. He has a background in Flash animation and advertising, and clearly has affection for the aesthetic and the tone of the show. He is also one of the few people who goes out of their way to put a lot of their success  down to luck, which gives him bonus points.

He was asked to pitch an idea, he came up with some of the characters, and the rest, as they say, was developed over a consequent series of brainstorming sessions, animation tests, focus groups and pilot episodes. Or something.

The animation is all done on something called Flash, which I only know from the amount of times it crashes my browser, but I'm glad there are genuinely people out there who know what it does and how it is used. For simplicity's sake, Duggee is the only character with shade gradients, and some characters are simple shapes (the frogs are just green triangles with eyes, and it's about time someone took them down a peg or two).

A tutorial on how to draw a triangle with eyes. Somehow, three previous steps are necessary to get to this point.

It has recently won an International Emmy Kids Award for best Pre-School show. At the same awards, a Danish show called Ultras Sorte Kageshow won for 'Best Non-Scripted Entertainment', which sounds a bit creepy, until you find out the translation is 'Baking in the Dark', and then it sounds completely creepy, like being stalked by Paul Hollywood.

Entertainment: Hey Duggee! is difficult not to love. The pace and tone are warm, energetic and playful, and there is a lot of self-awareness that is lacking in, say, let's pick on Bing again. Most funny is the fact that I watch the show in Yorkshire, a county where a 'Duggee' is a derogatory term for someone who has found themselves, by no fault or complete fault of their own, in the lowest set in a subject at school. It is like calling a show 'Hey Pleb!' or 'Hey Jeeves!' if you went to Eton.

At a first glance the Flash animation looks as if it's quite lazy - the demands of pre-school TV ensure plenty of content at the lowest cost. However, the animation style is probably one of its greatest strengths - the minimalism that works so well with web comics like XKCD helps you focus on the difficult plot points. There is a lovely surrealism to Hey Duggee! - not the dreamy hippy schtick of In the NightGarden, but perhaps something more in the way of magic realism crossed with a folk song.

Characters so simple, even a highly trained professional animator could design them.

Ratings:

Sex: Nothing to get your pulse racing, although Duggee's shadow/silhouette could be considered somewhat disturbing... 2/10

Once Duggee stops waving, we all get very scared very quickly.

Music: A clear strong point. The mandolin and/ or ukulele theme is fun, and does not earworm in the irritating habit of Raa Raa or the Teletubbies. There's also some unexpected dalliances with what sounds like 1930s swing music during montages. Essentially, the producers have asked themselves the most important question in children's TV - not 'what would the children like?' - but 'what would I like?' 8/10

Plausibility: One of the most endearing elements of this (or any other) children's show is also one of the most subtle. As the animal parents transport the Squirrels to Duggee's and pick them up later, you might note that the crocodile (named Happy) is dropped off by an elephant, heavily implying that Happy is adopted. Nothing is made of this in the show, but I can't really call to mind any other feature in any other CBeebies broadcast which shows that kind of empathy. However, that is not to say that the channel does not champion other minority groups, as in Mr Tumble's output, and their employment of Cerrie Burnell. Obviously the rest of it is largely fantastical - sadly even the notion of a scout hut is perhaps a bit too much of a throwback to a bygone time for a lot of Young People Today™. 6/10

Education: Given the implausibilities mentioned above, it is not much of a surprise that the educational nature of the show falls largely under 'soft skills' rather than actual subject knowledge. To whit, friendship, teamwork, and co-operation are centre-stage in each episode, plus the comforting reminder that not every seemingly inappropriate children's supervisor has a sinister dark side. Duggee is very much to his Squirrels what Mr Poppy is to Nativity! On another level, if I was a child, and had a basic working knowledge of computers, I would be inspired to learn how Flash works, and seeing what I could do with it. However, I lack the knowledge, skills, inclination, creativity, and time in the day, so I will have to rely on straightforward blogging templates for the time being. 7/10.

Overall: Well played, everyone. 8/10

Postman Pat SDS

Channel: CBeebies

Running Time: 15 minutes

Date: 2008- present

The original Postman Pat and Jess, back in the 1980s when you were a child, and nothing bad ever happened.

 Premise: Postman Pat has somehow been promoted, which would be outrageous, but when this spin-off first aired in 2008, Barack Obama was about to become president, and there was the sense that generally people got the jobs they were qualified for. Two years later, David Cameron became Prime Minister, and Postman Pat's rapid succession perhaps serves as a foreshadowing of the horrors of promoting incompetent ham-faced charlatans beyond their ability level.

Each episode, Pat is seemingly allowed to abandon his daily rounds, and scoot off to the nearby town of Pancaster to collect a 'Special Delivery', at the beck and call of the enigmatic 'Ben', possibly named after Ben Fogle, whom he resembles. Despite strict privacy laws, Ben and Pat are apparently allowed to open, examine, and sometimes play with the items that Pat is supposed to deliver.

Ben: Keeps breaking privacy laws.

Because children are supposedly too immature to appreciate the finer points of professional, efficient postal delivery, Pat is allowed to spend an entire day delivering one item, in one of his five  vehicles: aeroplane, helicopter, motorbike/sidecar, 4x4 jeep, and his regular van. He's really taking the 'Green' out of 'Greendale'. This is why they had to hike the price of stamps a couple of years ago.

Chuck in your regular supporting cast, who are really pushing the accents past 'unlikely' to 'really quite offensively poor', and some children who speak exclusively nasally, and you have Postman Pat SDS. 

Background: You all loved Postman Pat when you were children. Some of you, such as my friend Nick, had the soundtrack on vinyl, which was then added to the collection alongside Armand Van Helden and Paul Van Dyk in the late 90s, alongside a heavy dose of millennial irony. But in the same way that Hollywood is now only sequels and superheroes, someone at the BBC decided that the old episodes weren't enough for the new generation of pre-schoolers, who famously demand more 'pizzazz' from their postal distribution-based stop-motion animation. To avoid looking out of touch in a world where most of your post comes from Amazon, packaged by zero-hours minimum wage slaves, and is delivered in the middle of the day when everyone is at work, this spin-off was commissioned.

Postman Pat updated for the 21st century: on course to be history's most appalling century.

You're all wracking your brains trying to remember the episode where Postman Pat was mistaken for a member of the Japanese organised crime group the Yakuza, aren't you? Well, in 1994 Postman Pat was given an extra finger to bring him up to 5 digits, in a bid to avoid scaring Japanese children. The members of the Yakuza apparently cut off one finger in order to show their dedication and trustworthiness, and it was genuinely believed that Japanese children would mistake Postman Pat for a gangster. Just re-read that sentence again, and let it sink in. Bob the Builder went through the same process in the year 2000. We have lived through a digital revolution in more ways than one.

Entertainment: It has an unmistakable feel of the 'focus group' about it. You can visualise some suit at the BBC, presumably the person who also ruined Thomas the Tank Engine, walking round a meeting room asking the writers to make Pat 'more relevant'. Hence the rural idyll of Greendale has to share the Pat Map with the much more cosmopolitan 'Pancaster' , where presumably the aforementioned 'Ben' has a 'luxury flat', goes to wine bars, and buys his frappucinos from Cafe Nero. The set up - Pat is supposed to deliver post, makes a bollix of it - is much the same as in the original Postman Pat episodes from the 1980s, but with a bit more of a nod towards technology. For instance, we get a Loch Ness Monster Locator, delivered to Scotland in the middle of the day, by plane, to Mrs Goggins, who clearly cannot afford the delivery costs on her salary.

Celebrity culture has also hit, with popstar 'Brad Lee' making an appearance in season three: a bad boy with all the danger of a plasticine Jonas Brother; perhaps as a nod to the success of Downton Abbey we also see a cameo from the Duchess of Pencaster. Although I haven't seen it yet, there is an episode featuring a character called 'Sean McGuiness'. I get the feeling I know where he's going to be from. It is quite easy to picture the voice cast all putting up their hands to tell teacher what accent they can do - or, by the sounds of some of them, which ones they'll have a go at.

I can't remember the children of Greendale having so much airtime in the 1980s episodes, which might be a trick of the memory, but perhaps one based in my hatred of these whinging little gits. They all speak through their nose, and they appear to have got their pathetic inability to respond to setbacks from Bing the Bunny.

No-one ever watched Postman Pat for the children. No one watched it wishing Pat had a 4x4. No one wanted to see D-grade celebrities in Greendale.

It was supposed to be all about the post.

Ratings:

Sex: Not a sniff. Despite the opportunities for a postal delivery worker to witness things he really shouldn't (see the Speed 3 episode of Father Ted), 'Confessions of a Stop-Motion Postal Operative' it ain't. This is very much safe for work. And your pre-school child. 1/10

Music: They have retained the spirit of the original theme song, with a couple of nods to the 21st century with some slightly slicker synthesisers, and a disconcerting replacement of the 'letters' from 'letters to your door' with 'parcels', which always puts me off my stride. Some stupid nonsense pop songs about inclusion and fun have replaced classic declarative statement songs like 'Jess is His Cat'. Like almost everything from your childhood, apart from Margaret Thatcher, it was better in the 1980s. 4/10

Plausibility: Depends on your outlook. If you believe that the public sector is a bloated, inefficient, uncompetitive, stagnant waste of space, then you will be gullible enough to believe that the amount of tax pounds (always sounds worse than dollars, and they're nearly worth as much now) required to keep Pat's fleet of unnecessary vehicles running is a realistic portrayal of public sector waste. You never engage with public services anyway because you are too rich to care. Your name might be Alan Duncan, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Peter Bone or Philip Davies, and you can do one.

The price of 1st class stamps increased 100% from 2006 to 2016. Guess why.

However, if you actually work in or have dealt with the public sector in any way, then you will see Pat's luxury is the product of lazy writing, and the commercial department rubbing their thighs at the chance to release some new toys. However, the increased effort to make Greendale a bit more racially diverse is welcome, and probably annoys those aforementioned Tory arses, so that rescues some marks. 5/10

Education: Not a huge amount on offer, which is annoying, given its classic status in children's TV. Even the school scenes are short on content, largely to do with the fact that everything they need for their lessons is only being delivered that day by Pat. A bit of a return to silent writing and reading would be a refreshing step in Greendale Comprehensive (though it's probably Greendale Academy: A Performing Arts College by now). Doesn't teach you much about life, or the post. 2/10

Overall: There is an episode of The Simpsons where they attempt to revive Itchy and Scratchy through focus groups and network executives, and come up with Poochie the Dog, which fails, for those exact reasons. Ivor Wood, the original creator, died in 2004, and I like to think he would have said 'bugger off' to anyone who said they could improve Pat. Either that, or he's a dead-eyed capitalist who specifically requested in his will that this particular cow be cashed, without checking the quality of the milk first. 5/10

Bing

Channel: CBeebies

Running Time: 8 minutes

Date: 2014-

You want to punch them already, don't you?

Premise: 

A twatty little rabbit has seemingly been abandoned by his parents into the care of a childminder literally a quarter of the size of their child. As he encounters the myriad of problems a toddler can face on a day-by-day basis, he is guided through by this diminutive carer, Flop, and his friends Pando, Sula, Padget and Amma, though they never correct him on his appalling misuse of irregular verbs. At the end of each episode, Bing relates his tale in the form of  a monologue. Even though no-one has asked him to, Flop comes waltzing in, and describes the thing that Bing has done that day, pauses for an audible colon, and states "It's a Bing Thing" (interestingly, this was also the working title for the Chandler spin-off from Friends that was never green-lit).

Stories include the time Bing accidentally left the shop without paying for a lollipop, the time he bought a toy but actually wanted a different one, and there are at least two episodes that deal with pre-school incontinence. There are 78 episodes in all, which is equal to the Moomins. I don't really like them either, so I guess that proves something.

Background: 

Ted Dewan is an American-born British writer and illustrator who wrote a series of books called 'Bing the Bunny'. He published them six years before Microsoft decided that they wanted the name for that search engine that you only ever use to search for the Google homepage. Acamar films picked it up for adaptation, and CBeebies do the rest on a weekday morning, just after Teletubbies.

Mark Rylance is the voice of Flop. Mark Rylance happily did full-frontal nudity in the unbearable arthouse film Intimacy. Mark Rylance is the BFG and is one of Britain's greatest theatre actors. It is fair to say my feelings on Mark Rylance can be described as 'mixed'.

The perfect present for someone you truly despise

Entertainment: 

Oh, Bing. Where does it all go wrong? The title sequence is a good starting point; Bing comes flying out of his house to meet his friends; Flop is too small to do anything to stop Bing running into the road if he felt like it, and social services should be picking up on this obvious safeguarding issue. One of the strangest aspects of any title sequence I have seen sees Bing trip over; Flop asks if he's alright, Bing runs on. Sula confirms 'He's OK!'. What am I supposed to feel? The mild peril of a pre-school biped rabbit falling onto grass (its natural habitat)? Bing would have far fewer problems if he just walked the way his ancestors evolved, instead of trying to anthropomorphise himself like a tit.

The stories themselves are not terrible, but my GOD does Bing like to have a whinge. I lose all my pretensions to being a tolerant 21st century parent, who reads the Guardian, enjoys Bridget Christie and avoids gendered stereotypes, and end up shouting 'Man up!', 'Grow a pair!' and 'Just choose a toy, you little wuss!'

And we must mention the grammar, whilst we're here. I am no 'Grammar Nazi', because it is one of the stupidest, most casually offensive suffixes in existence. But I am a pedant. And an English teacher. I live in a part of the world where 15 year olds regularly argue that 'tret' is the past tense of 'treat', even after I, their God, tells them otherwise. So when I hear 'taked', 'choosed' and 'falled' spewing out of the mouth of this wilfully illiterate bunny, and he is not corrected by his peers and carers, something dies inside me. Bing also says 'yup' instead of 'yes' or 'yeah', which is what man-idiot Boris Johnson does. This is the BBC; they made their radio announcers wear a dinner jacket to read the news once upon a time; now it's come to 'yup' and 'biggerer'.  

The rip-off of Night Garden's plenary synopsis is unbearable, too, as Bing goes through a repetoire of intonation that induces Pavlovian waves of nausea each time he tells his story. Plot shifts are marked by 'but then', and the 'then' is given three separate sounds, going down in the middle: 'there-uh-en', drawn out like a public hanging. Prepare to hear 'and I was sad' in that little sing-song rhythm, too, as he litters his narrative with needless embellishments. 

Flop arrives with seconds to spare to confirm, "Skateboarding: it's a Bing Thing!", or "Choosing a toy: it's a Bing Thing!". The trouble with this catchphrase is that it is applied to almost any activity you can think of; he over exaggerates to such a farcical extent: "Dropping your ice cream: it's a Bing Thing". No. It. Isn't. The currency is quickly devalued, from an already low exchange rate.

However, for the lolz, you can make up any number of inappropriate 'Bing Things' of your own. "Catching an STI in a crack house: it's a Bing Thing!" Or, my current favourite: "Cacking yourself on the Tube: it's a Bing Thing!" Where some might see only irritation, I see opportunity.

Bing the Bunny

Ratings:

Sex: Bing will obviously fall in love with Sula when he's old enough, but she'll just want to stay friends, because she believes (rightly) she can hold out for better. But that won't be for a while. There's nothing else, unless you reckon Flop and Amma take advantage of nap time to have a quick cross-species fumble in the downstairs cloakroom, the mood killed by the sound monitor they have to take in with them as an OFSTED childminding requirement. 2/10

Music: A rare strong point. After the main credit sequence, we get a Twin-Peaks-esque bass-driven jazz intro, as if we are about to be led to downtown's Bing & Flop Detective Agency, rather than a implausibly large childminder's house. The final credit sequence is quite a pretty little twinkly piece, more befitting of In the Night Garden than this monstrosity. The show's (almost) saving grace: 7/10

Plausibility: Given that we have a talking bunny rabbit, we can't start from a high baseline. That said, there is an attempt made by the writers to consider the countless scenarios where an irritating child could need something explaining to it, in terms of how the world works. Perhaps they could mix it up a bit from time to time, because the consistently happy conclusions get quite tiresome. So instead of an understanding Padget, who realises that Bing would never have taken that lollipop if he knew he had to pay for it, I'd like to have seen her tap the sign saying 'Shoplifters will be prosecuted - NO EXCEPTIONS', and have the twinkly music over the end credits accompany the image of Bing being driven away in the back of a police car. And Bing would not do well in jail. 5/10

Education: To be fair, this show does its best to imagine how you might perceive life, as, in their words, a "relatively new human being". For those of you out there who've never told your child not to run in front of a swing, and weren't planning to any time soon, episode 3 has got you covered. Has your child ever got overly attached to an idiosyncratically-shaped potato? Never fear; episode 59 is here (the potato is called Nosey). The little re-cap at the end is useful if you've forgotten key plot points and want them narrated back to you in the whiniest voice you can imagine, It's an original twist, if you've never seen 'In The Night Garden' do literally exactly the same thing, with exactly the same animation style. 6/10

Overall: Bing is more 'Bed Wetter' than 'Go Jetter'; there are few more cloyingly 'worthy' shows on the airwaves. Someone tell Speilberg to keep Rylance busy for the next few years. 2/10. 

And I know these ratings don't average out.  They're not supposed to.