Blast from the past- The "ill-off-school" slot on Nickelodeon

As alluded to last week, being part of the generation that grew up with widespread access to cable and satellite TV had a profound effect on people of my age. Mostly, it made us a collectively fatter, frightened of the great outdoors and nature and helped, somewhat inadvertently and wholly regrettably, make being a nerd cool.

But were all of these new kids TV shows filling up the hundreds of new broadcasting hours worth the aforementioned consequences? No, is the simple answer to that, not one little bit. But that’s not to say the 90s marked a dearth in quality of kids TV, just the opportunity of playing innocently with your contemporaries everyday is something you really don’t appreciate until a decade or so after it finishes.

In fact, the 90s might even be a watershed for animation at children anyway. But first, a history lesson.

As anyone with the slightest knowledge of TV knows, the 1970s was the highlight of kids TV (in Britain at least) with shows like Bagpuss, The Clangers (basically anything by Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin) and the wealth of American imports from Warner Bros and the like; all of which remain as entertaining today as they were then. Or I expect they were then, being only 21 means my personal experiences of the 70s were rather limited.

However, for my money, in terms of animated kids TV, the 90s was something of a high-water mark. Sure there was some real dross (Fat Dog Mendoza springs immediately to mind there) but there were some stone-cold classics in the mix.

Mention Nickelodeon cartoons and immediately you’ll most likely get two responses; the Rugrats or Hey! Arnold and rightly so; both were well written, identifiable at the respective ages, aimed at children but not patronising and easy to follow. They’re only downside being they were both American and so continued the Americanisation of the English language in Britain.

However, a ‘Blast from the Past’ article shouldn’t focus on TV shows everyone knows and remembers so let us take a wander down a quieter road and get closer acquainted with something a little more niche.

Aside from the unusual head shapes in Hey! Arnold and the weird hair colours and faces of the adults in the Rugrats (and possibly Phil and Lil as twins are scary as), there was no real what-the-hell aspect to either of these TV shows. All kids’ cartoons should have an element of abstract oddness as said concept very rarely works in other TV aimed at older audiences, as evidenced by the career of Noel Fielding on TV.

So, on the basis for sheer balls-out, what-the-fuckery, this blog post will, somewhat belatedly, look at two animations that occupied the coveted “off school ill” slots on late 90s Nickelodeon; Arthur and Doug.

We’ll start with Arthur, now into its 15^th series (with another two in the pipeline), a show that, in retrospect, was incredibly crammed full of moral messages. It is made by PBS in America, mind.

For starters, Arthur’s extended circle of friends contains an individual from every conceivable socio-economic background and a large number of the problems Arthur and his chums encounter are often solved by a trip to the library or opening a book in some manner. Elsewhere, Arthur’s parents work from home as a chef and an accountant, respectively. Thus, we have arguments for the benefits of multi-culturalism, reading/publicly funded libraries, the nuclear family set up and running one’s own business (in the form of his father).

Elsewhere, Arthur also doles out advice on real-life social issues too from the death of pets and how to deal with dyslexia to advice on coping with loved ones with cancer, Aspergers and Alzheimer’s which is also nice and cheery.

Somehow, as well as throwing in moral crusades and advice on social issues into a kids’ TV show, there is even a steady stream of pop culture references made that keeps the at-home-looking-after-the-kids crowd mildly interested. How Arthur managed to fit in any of his shenanigans when all these other themes were cramping his style is a mystery.

Thankfully, all these other, more adult elements were delivered using an anthropomorphic aardvark, (although if you knew he was an aardvark at the age of 9 you were a super-genius) with lots of fun being had so we were all but putty for the messages to seep in, especially after that intensely catchy, reggae-style theme tune. There is probably a link between the amounts of Arthur a person my age watched in their youth and how left-leaning they are now.

At the other end of the covert influencing of young minds scale we have Doug a show which, from my memory at least, was notable for two things.

Firstly, the obsession Doug and his friend Skeeter had with the Lipps Inc. tune ‘Funkytown’ and going to a theme park called ‘Funkytown’ that presumably played ‘Funkytown’ over the PA 24/7 in a distinctly unfunky dystopic version of the early 1980s. Chilling.

Secondly, that the show either had the worst budget in the history of animation and could therefore only afford one box of crayons a series or, the writer had never seen human beings before and so had no idea at all what they looked like. I say this as nobody in Doug had the skin colour of a real human being, besides Doug, his family and his love interest, Patti Mayonnaise. Yes, that was really her name. Incidentally, ensure SafeSearch is on before Google image searching “Doug”. I really mean that; I’ve seen things, terrible things.

Anyway, yeah, skin colour. The aforementioned Skeeter was an aqua-green colour, nemesis Roger was also green, and neighbour Buddy was purple, as were twins Al and Moo.

Perhaps kids’ TV of today is equally as strange and bizarre and full of underlying socio-political messages but, quite frankly, I don’t care as things were always better in one’s own day (and that’s a fact) and, furthermore, I’m not going to watch hour upon hour of CBBC as its hard to sell that as “research” to those close to me.

Happy dawn of Spring day

For a person with self-diagnosed-but-unwilling-to-have-it-confirmed-as-medical-fact seasonal affective disorder (SAD indeed!), today was a quite momentous personal day.

Today marks the first day of happy weather season, medical term incidentally, for a number of reasons.

For those who mark their calendar based around sporting events, i.e. every sane person on this planet of ours, today is the football League Cup final day which, along with the first Grand Prix of the year and the end of the Six Nations, marks the dawning of Spring to cheer up our depressingly tedious little world. Largely cheering us up by allowing us to guffaw at randy farm animals boning everything that moves as we fly by on the motorway. Anywho, soon enough we’ll be hearing the sound of leather on willow and Frisbee on forehead and that’s a very warm thought indeed.

Secondly, you may have noticed that it was a tad unseasonably warm today, unless you’re from the North East in which case it’s warm all day, every day. Despite ridicule from my co-workers as I completed my exhausting 6 ¼ hour shift, I strode purposefully and manfully from my place of work to my car (which was parked at good 20 metres away) with nothing but a t-shirt to protect my skinny torso.

Amazingly, my mighty man nipples did not turn into the world’s most useless pair of orange juicers and thus, upon reaching my car, I was allowed to look magnificently cool (or a humongous douchebag, depending on your interpretation of the next few words) as I drove home with the window down and my driving arm resting on the window frame. Like I said, magnificently cool…in my mind. If only I had the foresight to have taken a pair of sunglasses. Alas.

As an aside, how nice of God (omnipotent and omnipresent Rupert Murdoch) was it to ensure that the first edition of the Sun on Sunday was met with some sun on Sunday. Way to win us all over again Rupert!

Thirdly, and most importantly as this just affected me and no-one else, the drive to work this morning was in something approaching broad daylight. The last time the sun rose before I did, the world still possessed Muammar Gaddafi, Whitney Houston and only one type of KitKat Chunky*. There is something quite uplifting about not having to graft one’s way to work through darkness so thick that it attended special classes, to deploy a rather awful metaphor.

So, I hear you not asking, how did I celebrate this wondrous day whereby the incredible changing of the seasons that our planet produces? Staying indoors all day and getting unhealthier, but of course. Money is required to be able to enjoy ciders in the sunshine and anyone who sunbathed today really should have had some funny looks aimed at them (yeah, I would have sunbathed today, but self-consciousness issues and all that).

 Happy dawn of Spring day y’all.

*For the purposes of that joke, we’re ignoring Christmas and New Year booze-induced lie-ins and any of my days off work. Why? Because I’m lazy and I’m not going to do a rewrite so there.

Blast from the past; pain with your cereal

Growing up around the dawn of the age of widespread satellite TV had many benefits; not having to go outside and the sacred ten minute freeview being two positives that immediately spring to mind.

Another advantage was the sheer breadth of viewing options covered for that vital period between waking up and going to school/college. This wealth of viewing alternatives meant you were never short of something to watch whilst you ate that retrospectively foolish chocolate-heavy cereal.

For the golden age of your childhood innocence, Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon were all you need with their bright colours, jaunty theme tunes and mild flirtatious banter between the presenters that largely went over your innocent head.

However, come the age of 11 or 12, secondary school had changed the way you saw the world. Laughing at other people’s misfortune became far more fun and we hedonistically hunted for something to appease that particular urge, a skill that would come in handy again around the age of 16 when another urge began to strike.

Uniquely, Challenge TV and, less uniquely, Japan, provided the solution to our morning schadenfreude craving; a man taking a football to a place where objects travelling at a high velocity hurt (his tescticles) was the perfect addition to our somewhat more adult, though still heavily-sugared, cereal of choice.

I am indeed talking about Takeshi’s Castle, the show that (may have) saved the (probably) floundering dental and chiropractor industries in late 80s Japan.

For those select few who are not familiar with niche, Japanese game shows from nearly two and a half decades ago that were only ever broadcast on satellite TV in the UK, here is the basic premise of the show; Japanese sadists smiling, laughing and only occasionally screaming as they have pain inflicted on them in a startling varied number of cruel, mad, ingenious ways.

The pretence for the biggest public display of pain-infliction since last John Terry last took a penalty, was a fictional Count Takeshi laying down a challenge; 100+ mad Japanese folk had to storm his ‘castle’ which was constructed out of what appeared to be cardboard and firework remnants, defended by dignity-free guards armed with water guns. These water guns were later upgraded to rather sad and pathetic looking lasers, presumably to match the sad and pathetic costumes.

To sort the wheat from the chaff and to prevent 100 very 1980s looking Japanese people breaking aforementioned cardboard castle through sheer weight of numbers, a series of challenges had to be overcome by the victims/contestants/ mental patients. These challenges often included the risk of facial disfigurement, permanent limps or loss of ability to bear child. Loss of dignity was never an issue however, as this was the 80s so uni-colour jumpsuits and God-awful hair were par for the course.

What was quite remarkable about Takeshi’s Castle was the staggering number of variations on challenges and games the producers managed to twist out of the term ‘ritual humiliation’.

There was a game where people ran through a maze of doors, being chased by men who looked as if they should have been on a government-enforced register, before having their faces blackened (for no discernible reason) or running through a door into some water. The Benny Hill theme tune was thankfully absent.

Elsewhere, people lost teeth and broke ribs as they skipped along stones, risked cranial damage by having giant balls dropped on their heads, ran headlong into potentially solid walls and received footballs fired from cannons into their unwelcoming testicular zone. Sadly, the challenge where contestants wrestled

Inevitably, more fails were shown than successes because, as the internetz knows, fails equals fun. However, a handful of victims made it through to the final showdown where leader of the assault on Takeshi’s Castle, the suspiciously dark-haired and dangerously inept military leader, General Lee led to them certain failure. Only nine contestants ever won the show, meaning you probably had a better chance of winning the lottery, although the constant hope-disappointment cycle of the lottery is less painful than a one off headlong dive into some mud.

Probably the one real flaw of the show, aside from the Craig Charles commentary, was that it eventually spawned in the UK Total Wipeout, 101 Ways to Leave a Gameshow and about a million other programmes with the same basic premise but all without the certain special something Takeshi’s Castle had; most likely a 1980s Japanese woman in her 20s making the peace symbol before cheerfully setting off at a brisk pace and the scene ending in her bouncing off of a wall that looked like a door.