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Into the Box of Delights: The History of Children's Television
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February 21, 2015
Anna Home, who has worked in television since the 1960s (becoming Head of Children’s Programmes at the BBC in 1986) provides a brief history of UK children’s television, from the first ‘Children’s Hour’ on Sunday afternoons in 1946 to the much wider spectrum of programmes of the early 1990s (when the book was published). It might be argued the book is BBC-centric, but this is perhaps because the story of the BBC’s children’s output provides the basic story of the UK children’s TV. Certainly, key shows from the various independent networks are brought in (Rainbow, Tiswas), but in as brief a history of so varied a subject as this, there are of course going to be many that never get mentioned.
After a chapter on ‘The Early Years’, when two different shows could be crammed into a single studio, and when the whole idea of television for children was still finding its feet, Home moves onto chapters covering the various major strands of programming: Puppets and Pre-school Programmes, Story-telling and Drama, Information and Specialist Programmes, Saturday Mornings, and Entertainment. The pace is brisk, but it’s an insider’s view of the subject, so there are occasional anecdotes (Huw Wheldon destroying a harpsichord a child had made out of matchsticks, and saying, ‘I’m sure you can stick it together again’), brief character portraits of some of the key behind-the-scenes figures (children’s TV was one of the few areas, in the early days, when women could quickly rise to important positions), clashes between children’s TV and current events (who wanted to interrupt with newsflashes), plus ‘the great Sesame Street argument’ (which I’d never heard of), when the BBC passed on the opportunity to buy this breakthrough US series. The origin of many long-running shows, such as Blue Peter, Play School and Jackanory, are discussed, but of course many shows are never mentioned in so short a book. Plus, Home puts paid to the urban legend that the characters in Captain Pugwash all had vaguely dirty names. They didn’t.
I’d have preferred many more anecdotes, and of course mention of my own favourite shows, but I suppose that’s the thing about any discussion of children’s TV — the programmes that meant so much to one generation mean nothing to the next. What’s interesting is reading about how children’s TV, as a genre, found its feet, and continued to change in a world in which TV’s role in people’s lives itself was constantly changing.
After a chapter on ‘The Early Years’, when two different shows could be crammed into a single studio, and when the whole idea of television for children was still finding its feet, Home moves onto chapters covering the various major strands of programming: Puppets and Pre-school Programmes, Story-telling and Drama, Information and Specialist Programmes, Saturday Mornings, and Entertainment. The pace is brisk, but it’s an insider’s view of the subject, so there are occasional anecdotes (Huw Wheldon destroying a harpsichord a child had made out of matchsticks, and saying, ‘I’m sure you can stick it together again’), brief character portraits of some of the key behind-the-scenes figures (children’s TV was one of the few areas, in the early days, when women could quickly rise to important positions), clashes between children’s TV and current events (who wanted to interrupt with newsflashes), plus ‘the great Sesame Street argument’ (which I’d never heard of), when the BBC passed on the opportunity to buy this breakthrough US series. The origin of many long-running shows, such as Blue Peter, Play School and Jackanory, are discussed, but of course many shows are never mentioned in so short a book. Plus, Home puts paid to the urban legend that the characters in Captain Pugwash all had vaguely dirty names. They didn’t.
I’d have preferred many more anecdotes, and of course mention of my own favourite shows, but I suppose that’s the thing about any discussion of children’s TV — the programmes that meant so much to one generation mean nothing to the next. What’s interesting is reading about how children’s TV, as a genre, found its feet, and continued to change in a world in which TV’s role in people’s lives itself was constantly changing.
Displaying 1 of 1 review