Postman Pat: The Movie

Went to see Postman Pat: The Movie today. While most of the action revolves around Postman Pat, his family, and various new characters introduced in the film, I was glad to see that all the old favourites were in there. I noted:

Mrs Goggins (but no Bonnie?!?!);
Alf, Dorothy & Bill Thompson;
Ted Glenn, who always seemed to […]

Vegetarianism on CBeebies

For some reason, perhaps a reluctance to deal with death, virtually all characters on CBeebies are portrayed as vegetarian, even some unlikely ones:

Doodles, the crocodile from Tilly and Friends eats mainly apples;
Captain Barnacles, Kwazii, Peso, and Shellington from Octonauts, despite being animals that would love a fishy snack (respectively: polar bear, cat, penguin, and sea […]

Iguanadon and Gideon Mantell

The kids are still both really into dinosaurs thanks to CBeebies’ supply of new Andy’s Dinosaur Adventures episodes, so today we took them for a walk to Gideon Mantell’s house, which is helpfully just along the road.
Gideon Mantell is credited with discovering the first iguanadon fossils, following the discovery of a fossil tooth by his […]

Andy’s Dinosaur Adventures

At the moment my son is really loving Andy’s Dinosaur Adventures, which I must admit is pretty well-made (even though we all miss Kip).

The premise of the show is that Andy is now working in “the National Museum” (most of the interior shots seem to be from the Natural History Museum in London; some of […]

Old Jack’s Boat Christmas Special

I’m a big fan of Old Jack’s Boat in general — great actors; good stories; charming animation — but the Christmas episode is something special.
Death is rarely mentioned on CBeebies. There’s a Woolly & Tig episode where a horse Tig is fond of dies. Peter Rabbit lives under threat from Mr Todd, Tommy Brock, and […]

Katie Morag; and Topsy and Tim

This Sunday a new series based on the Katie Morag books will be starting. It looks like it should be good.
The Beeb will also be bringing us Topsy and Tim. Some of the books are fairly dull, but the kids seem to like them, so we’ll see how the TV show pans out.

Whatever happened to Jeff Pringle?

Jeff Pringle, the Geordie schoolteacher, is mysteriously absent from Postman Pat: Special Delivery Service, though his son Charlie is still featured. In his place there is a new teacher Lauren Taylor.
The fact that Jeff is never even spoken about kind of indicates that perhaps something unspeakable happened.

Poi in State of Play

I’ve recently been rewatching the wonderful BBC TV serial State of Play.
I was surprised that Poi Fan Lee of Show Me, Show Me and Teletubbies fame has a small part in it, in a couple of episodes. She’s quite good.

Mike the Knight Voices

I recently discovered Jessica Hann’s website – she does the voice of Mike the Knight’s sister Evie (who is, incidentally my favourite Mike the Knight character). And from her website I found out who did the dragons’ voices – each of which had been bugging me for a while as being semi-familiar.
Sparky is played by […]

Dinosaur, Grrr!

OK, so Squiglet today was about a dinosaur. (Incidentally, what is Squiglet supposed to be? A piglet? Too orange and woolly. A lion or other ally of the cat? Who knows?) CBeebies doesn’t seem to have a regular show about dinosaurs. Why not? Kids love dinosaurs, don’t they? Mine do. Seems like such an obvious […]

Call off the DOGs!

Something Special is the only CBeebies program not to feature a digital on-screen graphic (DOG). You know – those station logos that plague the corners of our screens on many (particularly digital) television channels. In the case of CBeebies the DOG is a CBeebies logo that occasionally flips over to reveal a CBeebies blob festooned […]