Unlike the sinister undertones of today’s kids' TV, our favourite childhood shows were pure and wonderful.
Systems were in place to ensure it.
In short,In The Night Gardenis bizarre and terrifying.
But then I actually re-watched some of them.
I quickly discovered to paraphrase Herman Munster that sometimes dead is better.
Certainly my televisual era had been no oasis in the brain-deadening desert.
There was horror and betrayal around every corner.
God damn you, TV childhood: you were a sham!
Its certainly easy to see why my adult mind is such a labyrinth of depravity.
ButSesame Streetis justThe Muppetswith an educational remit.
How could any of that fail to benefit my son, whatever decade ofSesame Streetits sampled from?
So I watched a few episodes.
Okay, the title sequence.
Kids running over an industrial wasteland bedecked with gang graffiti, no problems there.
Now theyre bounding over a construction site.
It looks a little bit dangerous, but, fine.
So kids are riding bikes in the street.
Minus their safety helmets.
Yup, well, maybe our modern obsession with health and safety is… well.
I… see and… Cookie Monsters eating crockery and… now hes smoking.
And now hes eaten the pipe too.
It looks like everything thats ever been said about the 60s, 70s and 80s is true.
In the 1940s, Disney perpetuated the stork myth in its movies.
It showed babies arriving by parachute rather than by the more conventional, ickier womb-based route.
Scooby was a friendly, goofy, asexual pal to his young fans.
This was no time or place for the birds and the bees.
Kids couldnt be made to imagine our hero hammering away at some street-bitch like a four-legged sexual machine-gun.
CHIPMUNK HAS HOTS FOR HUMAN WOMAN.
I think I couldve lived with that headline, had that been the end of it.
Thanks Alvin, Simon and Theodore, you high-pitched heathens.
Thanks for derailing my psycho-sexual development.
Thanks for making me a Furry.
Do you know how much these squirrel costumes cost to maintain?!
Civil War rages in the Marvel Movieverse.
Heroes humans and Gods, mutants and monsters clash over issues of moral authority.
To whom are these heroes accountable?
Does any government have the right to control or command them?
Who will protect society from the excesses of our so-called saviours?
Yes, Im talking about Sooty.
How did Geoffrey come to live with these creatures?
Did he abduct them?
Doesnt he have a wife, or an ex-wife?
Someone in his life to raise an eyebrow at this rather unorthodox living arrangement?
Doesnt the gas man ever come round to read the meter?
OH GOD HELP ME!
THE POWER OF CHRIST COMPELS YOU!
THE POWER OF CHRIST COMPELS YOU!
Id be very interested to see how Geoffrey fills out his census.
Anyway, lets talk Zippy.
And with that, Im off to buy the complete box-set ofIn The Night Garden.
What about you lot?
