But it's not true.
Having a baby can restrict one's social life somewhat, so - apart from reading or the odd game of scrabble - evening entertainment for my wife and I does tend to quite often involve the magic picture box in the corner. Of course we are quite discerning, carefully selecting only the most authentic and insightful drama for our perusal. Oh, and I'll watch any sport whatsoever. Latvian tiddlywinks championships? That'll do.
So it was inevitable that our daughter would develop her own taste for telly, and I have monitored her preferences with great interest. She seems to consistently favour two programmes in particular.
The first of these is a popular choice amongst her generation: In the Night Garden. I must confess to being a novice in this area, but I have seen enough to become vaguely familiar with some of the finer points. Please accept my apologies, however, for any inaccuracies in the interpretation that follows.
The opening credits are powerfully hypnotic, largely due to their painstaking stop-motion animation. Something (whose exact nature I can't quite recall) is in a boat, in the sea, at night. Then the camera pans up to the sky, whose stars mutate dreamily into beautiful white flowers which multiply to fill the screen before parting to reveal a forest which, by this point in proceedings, I am compelled to describe as magical. Then it gets really trippy.
We've all heard the rumours about The Magic Roundabout having been conceived by some Belgians off their Flemish faces on LSD. It's hard to imagine In the Night Garden having anything other than a very similar genesis. I'm reliably informed that each episode begins with a Matrix red pill/blue pill style, fate-defining cliffhanger, which revolves around a choice between two modes of transport to the night garden. The ninky-nonk - some sort of early Persian circus themed train - is my daughter's favourite option. I am yet to experience the pleasure of the other possibility, but I gather that its name is something which rhymes with ninky-nonk. I'm not sure where the tension comes from.
Once this difficult decision has been made, we are introduced to the characters who inhabit the night garden. My personal favourite is the one with a funny shaped head who lives in a cave and collects rocks, in order to pursue his hobby of cleaning rocks. I can't remember his name. Sorry. There are also some very small creatures. I wasn't really paying much attention to them. Then there's Oopsy Daisy, an endearing young lady who falls over a lot, which ties in conveniently with her name and catchphrase (which is the same as her name).
But the hero of the piece is undoubtedly Iggle Piggle. Our daughter loves Iggle Piggle. Now, I don't wish to offend, but there's no getting away from the fact that Iggle Piggle looks quite phallic. This must have been deliberate. This chap's appearance represents the subversive legacy of a Belgian drug dealer's contribution to children's TV. He's got a really good song though. He sings it a lot.
These characters basically do some stuff that they always do, and then it's all repeated in rudimentary animated form. We don't usually bother with that bit. But I can definitely see the appeal of In the Night Garden. It's mental, but in an overwhelmingly cosy way.
The same cannot be said of the other show that holds our daughter's rapt attention in all circumstances: The Weakest Link. I'm sure there's no need for me to offer much description of this. People clearly selected precisely for their ignorance fail to answer insultingly easy questions, all of which serves only to provide a platform for an old witch to sneer cheap insults at them. And they're all delighted that this is happening. So is our daughter.
But what really irritates me about this bullying based quiz is the determination of the writers to have Anne Robinson introduce each question under a very specific category. So a poser about, I don't know, tomato ketchup would begin "In ketchups..." I think we're supposed to assume that this one question has been drawn from a vast bank of ketchup trivia at the fingertips of Ms. Robinson. Which seems unlikely to me. Hopefully our daughter will grow out of The Weakest Link.
But not In the Night Garden.
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