Danger Mouse – When I was born my parents were sent flowers by series co-creator Brian Cosgrove and the card read, “Welcome to a new Danger Mouse fan”. Who knew that not only was he one of the greats of children's television but he was also a clairvoyant. Cosgrove Hall produced some wonderful series (Count Duckula, Wind in the Willows etc.) but the one I will always remember them for is Danger Mouse. It had a great British sense of humour and two of the finest vocal performances of any show I have seen. Both David Jason and Terry Scott brought so much life to these characters, helped immeasurably by great scripts and animation, that the series seemed to some how transcend children's TV and have a cross-over appeal.
Knightmare – What a series! The finest game-show for children ever created. Hugo Myatt as Treguard the dungeon master set the tone perfectly and the VR elements seemed really futuristic at the time. It was amazing that such a sense of peril could be created with so little. Very few of the challenges were really that exciting but the reaction of the team and the strangely unsettling decomposing life force face made it edge-of-the-seat entertainment. As with many shows of the time it also had a cracking opening theme. There are a few modern shows, such as Raven, that have tried to recreate the same vibe (high fantasy, dungeon master type guide) but they just haven't hit upon the magic formula, perhaps because the isolation of a single participant, even though he is being guided, had a strange power.
Heartbreak High – This Australian highschool drama series was like a cooler, slightly edgier and less moralising version of Grange Hill. It ran for three character cycles, covered a whole range of issues and maintained its high standards throughout the entire run (although the final cycle did lack the strong characters that made the earlier seasons so appealing). It is a shame this show hasn't been repeated as there isn't really anything like this on UK television. It was a midway point between children and adult TV and treated its audience with respect. It may have covered some difficult issues but you never got the impression that it was beating the audience over the head with them or standing on a soap box and moralising to them. There seems to be a gap in the market for a solid young teen show. America no longer produces them as Disney have hit on a winning formula and are happy to repeat it whilst the likes of Nickelodeon just try and do more of the same. This is in stark contrast to series like My So-Called Life that at least tried to reflect the life of its audience. In the UK things are no better as the middle ground is completely ignored as they go from kid's shows to something like Skins which is probably skewed too old for a 11-13 year old audience.
Eerie, Indiana – I was a big fan of horror anthology shows when I was growing up. I couldn't get enough of series like Shadows, Are You Afraid of the Dark? and Round the Twist (the latter skewing more to fantasy than horror). My favourite show of this type though was Eerie, Indiana that ran briefly on Channel 4 in the early 1990s. It had a great balance of humour and scares and some of the most memorable plots of their kind. The cast were brilliant too. Most live action kids shows have terrible actors (both the adults and children) but everyone here was surprisingly decent. The shows appeal is probably not that surprising when you discover that Joe Dante (Gremlins) directed a large bulk of the episodes and they felt much more polished and cinematic than typical shows aimed at a young audience. Whilst the series has quite a committed following it is a shame it never really took off when it was originally on as it had bags of potential to run for many seasons.
The Muppet Show – Very occasionally a show will come along that you think was produced just for you, one such show was this hugely popular Henson creation. Growing up Jim Henson could do no wrong in my eyes with hit after hit on both the big and small screen. Whilst Sesame Street may have been the one with the legs (it is amazing to think it is still going strong) the one that will be most fondly remembered is The Muppet Show. Everything about it just worked; it had a whole host of memorable and brilliant characters, a great anarchic sense of humour and every celebrity at the time was clamouring to be a part of it. Whilst I have included it here as a children's show it seemed to have just as big an adult audience. It is good to see than Henson Productions are now revisiting these much-loved franchises (films for The Muppets, Fragglerock and Dark Crystal are all in the works) although it would have been nice to see them moving forward with new ideas too, something Jim Henson was always interested in doing despite the huge success of his more established franchises.
Avatar: The Legend of Aang – This is the most modern series on my list partly because it is brilliant and partly because it feels very much like the series' I grew up with. What separates Avatar from most of the current shows of its ilk is that it is so well developed. From episode one the world is fully formed. You never get any sense of inconsistencies or them making it up as they go along. The way each tribe exist, the way they have distinct cultures and fighting stances etc. really makes it a rich world. They never resort to throwing in cheap characters to mix things up and the arc managed to sustain three seasons comfortably whereas most run out of steam much quicker.
Whilst it is still a kids show (I always get a bit annoyed when things for kids are somehow supposed to inferior because they don't know any better) the writer's never once speak down to its audience. The gags are rarely forced and spring from characters rather than crazy situations. Production values are unbelievably high but all the money looks like it is up on screen with beautiful animation, stunning action choreography and great art direction. The series thankfully bowed out at the top but because they had created such a rich and untapped world they have managed to develop a spin-off focussing on an earlier Avatar. Normally this would fill me with dread but I trust the creators to maintain the high standards they set with the original.
Mysterious Cities of Gold – Back in the '80s there was a number of animated series with a single epic story arc. It is something we rarely see these days (Avatar and Naruto being the only two that really stand out – I'm sure there are more currently in Japan but I am focussing on those that air in the UK). It is a shame this type of animated drama isn't as popular as it once was as the stories swept you away on fantastical quests and became must-see-TV, much more than something that relied on standalone stories of the week that you could dip in and out of. I would have found a place for Mysterious Cities of Gold in my list for the opening theme tune alone but the fact the story was exceptional certainly helped. The series combined part history lesson and classic adventure story with science fiction and fantasy. It was the grounding in a reality that made the fantastical all the more fantastic and the quest all the more memorable. As with all the shows in my list, Mysterious Cities of Gold has aged very well indeed. There were a number of great French-Japanese co-productions at the time, some have made the list but due to space others have not. One such series was Spartakus and the Sun Beneath the Sea, which had the same tonal quality as MCoG but I have yet to get around to re-watching it to see if it has aged as well.
Batman: The Animated Series – As good as the Nolan Batman films have been the definitive screen depiction of the caped crusader is still the animated series from the early '90s. It got so many things right; it was faithful to the source material whilst still feeling as if it stood alone, it had a striking art direction and, for a kids TV show about a superhero, it was surprisingly dark. The series has aged quite brilliantly and having bought the series for two of my nephews recently I can attest to the fact that a whole new generation like it too. The series managed to juggle the many elements of what has made Batman such an enduring character. Many either focus too much on the Batman side or get Bruce Wayne wrong yet here the writers manage to marry the two sides of his life to create one of the most complete pictures of this conflicted character (well as much as a kids show ever will). The show also has some of the best depictions of the Bats rogues gallery of villains. The Joker, voiced with maniacal relish by Mark Hamill, is a revelation in this series and the Ron Perlman as the tragic Clayface is also noteworthy.
Samurai Jack – Some things are just too good for children. They might be the target audience but you just know they won't fully appreciate it. A good case in point is this wonderful series from Genndy Tartakovsky. If I wasn't being so strict with my list I probably would have found a place for all his TV shows. For my money Genndy is the finest action director working today and maybe one day he will finally make the transition to films (he is supposed to be working on a feature length film of Samurai Jack but things have gone very quiet recently). Samurai Jack is a series full of too many wondrous moments to list here, it is a series full of humour, beautiful animation and art direction and some of the finest action sequences you are likely to see. Anywhere. Because of the concept – master Samurai thrown into the future that is now ruled by his arch nemesis and shape shifting worm-thing, Aku (brilliantly voiced by the now sadly departed Mako) – it affords Genndy to juggle genres and ideas so you can have a wild west train ride one week followed by a wordless battle with a ninja in beautiful stark black and white the next. So many ideas are thrown into the mix that it should end up a bit of a mess but it feels so cohesive and the world is so well realised that it just works so effortlessly. Children will no doubt enjoy the action and the humour but the series is layered with so many references and incidental touches that it is one of those rare shows that offers as much to an adult audience as it does to its target demographic.
Manoel on the Island of Wonders - This programme was unknown to me until last year, originally a three part mini-series for children that aired in France and Portugal in 1984, it has since been largely forgotten which is frankly criminal. The '70s and '80s were a golden age for children's television, especially the mini-series, with some very unusual content being commissioned. Even in that climate of risk taking it is amazing to think any broadcaster would give a green light to director Raul Ruiz to make what he wanted. Despite this being for children, and I believe children would enjoy this immensely, you get no sense that Ruiz has had to compromise anything in bringing his vision to the screen.
Sadly the series is hard to get hold of and the only version that appears to exist is a television recording that is ropey at best, but I did recently discover that the whole thing is up on Youtube – here.
The series is split into three chapters, each one is self contained yet also deeply connected to the next. Each story follows Manoel, a young boy on the island of Madeira, and the strange things that occur to him there. I am going to talk about the plot(s) in some detail because if I don't I'm going to struggle to explain or do the series justice. Whilst it may seem like I am spoiling it for those that might want to watch it themselves I promise the experience will not be dulled by prior knowledge:
Part One - Manoel wakes in the night to discover that a burglar has stolen the family jewels. This one event triggers a time loop where present and future meet (although it is being narrated in the future so in fact it is where distant past and past meet). The next morning Manoel leaves for school but a voice keeps calling him. He decides to skip class and investigate who the mystery voice belongs to. This fateful decision will shape and haunt the next six years of his life because as he follows the voice through the towns forbidden garden he comes face to face with his future self. The older boy explains why he is there as well as the events of the previous night with the robbery. The event of meeting ones future self would normally be a big deal but here, in their first meeting, it is played very matter-of-factly. After their talk the younger Manoel meets a fisherman in a nearby cave who tells him great stories and demands that Manoel skip school again tomorrow so they can go fishing together (which he duly does). However when he skips school for a second time it causes problems at home. Rather than his parents punishing him they give up on him altogether which, coupled with the loss of the jewels, makes his mother sick with worry and die. Six years pass and the boy grows up, his life now in ruins he goes to challenge the fisherman that destroyed his family. Yet his stories entrance him once again and off they go to catch more fish. The fish they catch this time is no ordinary fish for it's belly is full of the jewels lost six years earlier. With them back in the boys possession he heads back home to discover that time has reset itself and he is now witnessing the fateful night of the robbery. Time loops back a further two times, each time the two Manoel's try and do things differently. The next time they don't skip school with the fisherman, instead they excel at their studies, yet this puts a financial burden on his parents, his father turns to gambling to pay the school fees and he dies. The third time they go to school but are indifferent to the whole process which results in both parents surviving but Manoel dying. Whilst the moral message is highly dubious and deeply depressing the cyclical story is brilliantly realised.
The whole episode is narrated like a story book. It has a beautiful dreamy quality that harks back to classic literature like Alice in Wonderland and Tom's Midnight Garden. Whilst it has a complicated time line, especially for something aimed at children, it is always easy to follow and it has a strong child's logic. The episode is full of wonderful little details left largely unexplained. For example, in the cave with the fisherman lives a boy who is half man and half dog. Who he is and why is like that is left unexplained and Manoel doesn't seem all that interested in his presence. It is the sort of detail that an adult craves an answer for yet a child just accepts. The fact this is the most straight forward story of the three illustrates just how odd the series is as a whole.
Part Two - The second instalment is where things become a little stranger, time is less clearly defined, and darker elements creep into the story. Part two opens where episode one finishes - the teacher takes his pupils out into the middle of a forest for a shared dream exercise. The idea being that if a group dreams the same thing it becomes a reality. The children are tasked with dreaming about a much needed hospital for the island but Manoel cannot force sleep and drifts off later than the other children. This results in him entering a nightmare forest where each tree represents the dreams of his peers. In this dream he meets a pirate who can command the birds and beats the trees with a stick so they give him wine. He tricks poor Manoel and they swap bodies. Yet when they wake the pirate is real (whether he has been manifested by Manoel or was sharing the dream is not clear, nor particularly important). The pirate becomes the son of Manoel's parents whilst Manoel is forced to sleep rough. Traditionally most of the episode would then be made up of the boy trying to get his body back yet the body swap angle only makes up half of the episode. There are some great scenes in this section as pirate-Manoel causes mischief as if he was Damien from The Omen as well as a rather disturbing and vaguely sexual encounter with his new mother. He still has command over the birds, and in a scene reminiscent of Hitchcock's The Birds, uses them to attack adult-Manoel. Despite appearing as if this story occurs after episode one we discover who is responsible for the robbery at the start of part one which shows exactly how fluid time is on this island.
Yet Manoel gets his body back with twenty minutes to spare, which is plenty of time for him to be shipped off to live with his aunt on the other side of the island. Here things get odd(er). The house is full of ghosts, not that this bothers Manoel, and he is forced to play mean games with the servant's nasty children. There is also a bizarre radio interlude about a young chess champion born from the body of a dead woman who is going to marry a boy who has had a brain transplant. As is the case with the whole series this story then plays into a major part of the third episode. This shift in the second episode is when logic takes a back seat.
Part Three - Traditionally, strange children's stories will have a clear delineation between the real world and the fantasy. In The Wizard of Oz Dorothy is whisked away and in Wonderland Alice travels down the rabbit hole. There is a comfort to be had in that a real and safe world is out there to return to. What makes this series different is there is no clear dividing line which makes the strangeness far more unsettling, none more so than in episode three. This is where the story takes a turn for the nightmarish as children are magicked away by a Pied Piper-like captain (who may well be the pirate from episode two in disguise). There are uneasy costumed parties inside a night time elephant and a freakish shadow puppet display in arguably the standout sequence of the entire series. It is hard to describe this section of the series as I have no real idea what is going on but it is safe to say there is more invention in its fifty minute runtime than most directors would achieve over an entire career. It is also an incredibly brave thing to end on as the safety net of reality is never quite returned to and the fate of Manoel, and particularly his disappearing cousins, is left tantalisingly unanswered.
Despite having that cheap air of early '80s children television the film looks surprisingly beautiful, and scary, at times. The naive childlike music can both be sweet and innocent or deeply sinister depending on the actions on screen. The performances aren't strong but they never have a detremental impact on the overall experience. If you didn't guess from my long meandering post, I absolutely love it!
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What would your top twenty look like? Are there any big omissions from my list? Are there any baffling submissions in my selection? Discuss.
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