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| Wednesday, March 16, 2011 01:23 PM |
| On the Viewer - A Survey of Children's Programming, Including Kipper |
 by Fëanor |
As you might expect, we've been watching a lot of children's programming lately. Griffin, to our great disappointment, isn't very interested in much of it. If the show involves a puppet - especially a monster puppet - then sometimes he will consent to stare at it for a while, and sometimes he'll even fall asleep watching it (which is nice, as it's hard to get him to take a nap any other way, except by strapping him in his car seat and taking him for a drive). Elmo on Sesame Street and Chica on the Sprout channel's Sunny Side Up Show are particular favorites. But most of the time he just glances at the screen for a few moments and then wanders off.
Still, we keep trying (we've got to keep that kid entertained somehow!), and in the process we've developed some strong likes and dislikes of our own. The shows generally fall in and around three categories - unbearable, bearable, and legitimately entertaining - with most of them unfortunately landing somewhere on the border between bearable and unbearable.
I find The Wiggles and Barney & Friends to be almost completely unbearable. The Wiggles are just creepy and annoying, and their dinosaur ("Dorothy" - a lifeless green monster suit) and pirate (his sword is a feather! What kind of pirate is that??) are lame. Barney is preachy, constantly singing irritating songs, and constantly surrounded by ugly dinosaur friends and bad child actors. Dirtgirlworld, an Australian cartoon with a really creepy art style where real people's faces are combined with animated characters, is just weird and disturbing.
Caillou - a Canadian cartoon about an imaginative, inexplicably bald young boy and his family - dances on the line between bearable and unbearable. The theme song gets lodged in your head with truly demonic intensity. Also verging on unbearable: Berenstain Bears, SUPER WHY, and Monkey See Monkey Do.
The Mighty Jungle is a bearable show with cute animal puppets that takes the interesting tack of bringing actual children into the studio to workshop out a storyline for each episode. Bearable shows that I don't have much of an opinion on: Thomas & Friends, Bob the Builder, Chloe's Closet, Roary the Racing Car, Mama Mirabelle's Home Movies, Driver Dan's Story Train, Pajanimals.
We're pretty big fans of Sesame Street and the spin-off show Play With Me Sesame. I mean, c'mon. Muppets! It's classic stuff. Zoboomafoo is also a pretty great show. It's mostly live-action and teaches you a lot about animals. There's also a claymation segment, and an animal puppet who stands in for the titular lemur.
But undoubtedly our favorite kid's show so far is Kipper. Kipper is a British cartoon based on a series of children's books, and the theme song is nearly as catchy as Caillou's. It's set in a world populated by anthropomorphic animals. The titular character is a dog and so are most of his friends, although he also has a couple of chums who are pigs (one named Pig, the other - a quiet, cute baby Pig looks after - named Arnold), and a mouse for a roommate. Oddly there are no female characters on the show, although according to Wikipedia there is one in the books (we'll have to find those eventually). Anyway, Kipper is really mellow, clever, sweet, and funny. A lot of kids' shows seem obsessed with having a moral and teaching the children important life lessons, which can make them preachy and patronizing, but Kipper is just silly and fun. It's not about anything in particular; it's just a bunch of amusing stuff that happens to a dog and his buddies. The characters are laid back, giggly, and don't seem to have much to do but hang out, eat, and have parties. I can't tell if Griffin likes the show, or if he even has an opinion on it at all, but poppy and I love it. The truth is, we even watch it sometimes after he's gone to bed. |
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