An age gone past

[davidn]

I've been delving into the DVDs converted from my parents' video archives again after a while away from them - the process in getting them up to Youtube is unimaginably roundabout, having to rip them from the DVD in one program, convert them to a usable format in another, then use iMovie to split them into uploadable segments (who said Macs were easy?), so I can only do a few at a time before I get utterly fed up for a while.

What's sticking out to me most is the sheer amount of things that I grew up with that nobody would ever be allowed to get away with today. One of the relics on a cartoons tape was an episode of the Blue Racer, which in a sort of Road Runnerish fashion showed the repeated attempts of a supersonic blue snake to catch a lost Japanese beetle, complete with accent, slit-eyes and wonky teeth.

Pinny's House is something that gets mixed reactions whenever I show it to anyone - some people are absolutely horrified by it and some see no problem with it at all. I had just remembered it as a charmingly stylized story, in that way that Oliver Postgate used to manage so effortlessly, and while it doesn't contain any absurdly exaggerated racial stereotyping like the above cartoon did, I couldn't help noticing now that Victor is the smallest and also... blackface-est wooden sailor in the world.

And Mr Boom had the distinction of being the only programme that I remember from that era that I found a bit weird even at the time. This one was home-grown in Scotland, and was a pre-school storytelling series, hosted by a one-man band with a lampshade on his head who lived on the Moon. And the smiley blue ping-pong ball in the television screen with the voice that's exactly halfway between a Dalek and one of the turrets from Portal.

Comments

[kibet.livejournal.com]

I remember Pinny's house. was never a fan but I found it really entertaining watching it now.

I never saw Mr Boom before but that was after my time as I would have been 9 when it came out. It is quite funny to here the "wheek down Alec the story teller" and made me realise I did not know how to spell wheek and as such could not search for correct spelling.

I also never realised how many stars were on Cluedo. I could remember Leslie Grantham but nobody else. Watching it again it is like a who's who of british television.

[diarytypething.livejournal.com]

I don't remember either of the first two, but Over the Moon with Mr Boom was an established part of the tv schedule in our house. About 12 or so years ago, Mr Boom visited my sisters' school, and the younger kids got a bit starstruck.

[lupineangel.livejournal.com]

When you said it was a Dalek crossbred with a Portal turret, I didn't believe that was possible. Then I clicked the link.

OH GOD, WHAT HAS SCIENCE DONE???

D.F.