{"id":3173,"date":"2015-09-10T22:16:13","date_gmt":"2015-09-10T21:16:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=3173"},"modified":"2015-09-11T22:12:48","modified_gmt":"2015-09-11T21:12:48","slug":"watch-with-father-1-in-the-night-garden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=3173","title":{"rendered":"Watch With Father #1: In The Night Garden"},"content":{"rendered":"

As a new parent paying serious attention to CBeebies for the first time, you\u00a0may well find yourself starting with\u00a0In The Night Garden<\/em>. \u00a0Not only is it a global success, but it’s aimed at the very youngest of children.<\/p>\n

Your initial reaction is\u00a0likely to be horror at the prospect of\u00a0watching this on a regular basis. \u00a0Here is the plot of a\u00a0fairly typical episode of\u00a0In The Night Garden<\/em>: Makka Pakka washes the faces of the Pontipines, who are small, followed by the faces of the Haahoos, who are big. \u00a0Here is the plot of\u00a0another fairly typical episode of\u00a0In The Night Garden<\/em>:\u00a0The Tombliboos’ trousers fall down a lot. \u00a0The Tombliboos love their Tombliboo trousers. \u00a0Isn’t that a pip?<\/p>\n

At first glance, In The Night Garden <\/em>can\u00a0come across as\u00a0plotless meandering. \u00a0And often it is, since it’s aimed at children so young that they’re still learning the basic building blocks of visual storytelling. \u00a0Every episode of the show ends with one of the\u00a0regular characters going to bed and being told\u00a0a “story” by the narrator, which is always a recap of the episode in\u00a0rudimentary animation. \u00a0Often, the show seems to be engaged in\u00a0seeing how far back you can pare a narrative before it ceases to be a story at all. \u00a0The answer, frequently, is “not this far”.<\/p>\n

The other thing that\u00a0is obvious at an early stage is the sheer oddness of the show. \u00a0Ostensibly, the\u00a0Night Garden is supposed to be a\u00a0place between waking and sleep, though\u00a0this isn’t exactly spelled out explicitly in the programme itself. \u00a0Pitched at an audience too young to really understand any sort of\u00a0conventional plot,\u00a0the show instead offers\u00a0a cast of familiar characters defined not so much by personalities as by signature traits. \u00a0Nobody has any emotional range beyond vague concern at mislaying their signature\u00a0possessions.\u00a0 Virtually everyone has their own signature song which\u00a0the narrator performs for them (the Pontipines don’t, but have an\u00a0elaborate “leaving the house” routine);\u00a0most characters can\u00a0only say their own names and “Pip pip onk onk”, which means goodbye.<\/p>\n

Some of those character\u00a0traits\u00a0are pretty\u00a0normal,\u00a0if you take the characters to be basically ambulatory toys. \u00a0Iggle Piggle likes his blanket and is easily panicked. \u00a0Upsy Daisy likes to sing and dance. \u00a0The Pontipines are a tiny family living in a tiny house. \u00a0 The Ball is just a ball. \u00a0More curious are\u00a0the Tombliboos, a trio who look like a cross between Frank Sidebottom and a pack of Refreshers,\u00a0who play\u00a0horrific atonal “music”, and who have a\u00a0perennial difficulty with\u00a0waistband tailoring. \u00a0Then there’s Makka Pakka, who lives in a cave,\u00a0whose only apparent interests are stone-polishing and face-washing, and who goes to sleep at night hugging a rock as if it was a teddy bear. \u00a0And the Haahoos,\u00a0giant grinning inflatables who the narrator persistently treats as characters, but\u00a0which sure look like giant grinning inflatables.<\/p>\n

Somewhere around this point you may be inclined to check Wikipedia and find out how many episodes of this thing there are. \u00a0The answer is one hundred. \u00a0Jesus. \u00a0There’s fifty hours of it.<\/p>\n

As\u00a0time goes on, you realise\u00a0that while most things in the show are spelled out slowly and painstakingly, some are clearly being withheld, or are just plain odd. \u00a0The opening credits and the closing wind-down sequence\u00a0clearly imply that Iggle Piggle\u00a0(uniquely) is not a\u00a0resident of the Night Garden, but visits it when he falls asleep – he’s shown falling asleep in his tiny boat at the start, and he’s the one character who has nowhere to go to sleep at the end –\u00a0but the narrator never actually explains this. \u00a0The\u00a0Wottingers and the Haahoos are never going to get an episode of their own. \u00a0The\u00a0coloured birds who serve\u00a0as scene transitions are left for parents to teach numbers and colours with, unprompted by the show. \u00a0The Pontipines’ house has a bell on it that summons them home for no discernible reason. \u00a0The two vehicles – the Ninky Nonk and Pinky Ponk – are deliberately filmed without any consistency in their scale relative to the characters, with no explanation.\u00a0\u00a0And why is Iggle Piggle’s song so persistently out of time with the music? \u00a0It’s clearly a deliberate choice. \u00a0But\u00a0why<\/em>?<\/p>\n

Somewhere around this point you will have the horrible realisation that you’ve seen this episode before. \u00a0How can that be? \u00a0Weren’t there 100 episodes? \u00a0But In The Night Garden<\/em> airs daily, which means it cycles through those 100 episodes roughly four times a year. \u00a0This is not a problem for the very young; they\u00a0develop so much in those three months that it’s genuinely a different experience for them the same time round, and besides, any familiarity may actually be a boon for them. \u00a0It is more of a challenge for the adults.<\/p>\n

In\u00a0The Night Garden<\/em> is\u00a0one of\u00a0CBeebies’ flagship\u00a0shows, and the sort of thing that, in a prior generation, would have bemused\u00a0an appreciative audience of dazed mid-morning students, just as\u00a0Teletubbies<\/em> did in the 1990s. \u00a0This is not a coincidence. \u00a0Night Garden\u00a0<\/em>was created by Andrew Davenport<\/a>, who was also co-creator of\u00a0Teletubbies<\/em> along with Anne Wood. \u00a0He wrote all 100 episodes, together with all the music. \u00a0And\u00a0there are very obvious\u00a0similarities\u00a0between the two shows, both of which\u00a0use actors in live action costumes to depict babbling childlike characters in\u00a0a\u00a0bucolic landscape.<\/p>\n

But a major point of difference between the two shows is that\u00a0Night Garden <\/em>is designed to air at the end of the CBeebies\u00a0schedule, and prime its audience for bed. \u00a0Yes, there are some hyperactive episodes in there, but\u00a0the extended wind down sequence at the end of every episode\u00a0attempts to cancel that out. \u00a0Actually, the show no longer\u00a0airs\u00a0quite<\/em> at the end of the schedule – it’s followed by a ten minute bedtime story\u00a0slot – but it’s very close. \u00a0And so it’s a version of the format that couldn’t have been done\u00a0on the traditional\u00a0children’s slots on BBC1 and 2.<\/p>\n

In The Night Garden\u00a0<\/em>is, in fact, an exercise in the sustained creation of an aesthetic. \u00a0There are no guest characters; there are no guest locations. \u00a0Every episode is based on finding new combinations of a very limited palette\u00a0of familiar elements. \u00a0Once the tiny viewers have oriented themselves to the show, they’re always\u00a0presented with things they recognise. \u00a0And those elements are then used to get across such ideas as “up and down”, “over and under”, “loud and quiet”, “alone and together”, and “the\u00a0Tombliboos’ trousers have fallen down again”.<\/p>\n

A lot of children’s TV has an obvious eye on the adult audience. \u00a0That’s understandable,\u00a0since the reality of pre-school TV is that a substantial proportion of the\u00a0audience is in fact adults. \u00a0The rest of the viewers are too young to be left unattended. \u00a0Going forward, we’ll see\u00a0shows which try, with varying degrees of success, either to entertain the adults on the side, or to find things which are genuinely\u00a0entertaining to adults and children alike.<\/p>\n

In The Night Garden<\/em> is not one of those shows. \u00a0With rare exceptions – mostly involving Mr and Mrs Pontipine and their perennial inability to go for a walk without losing the children and flying into a panic that the narrator entirely ignores –\u00a0In The Night Garden<\/em> is completely unconcerned with entertaining the adult audience. \u00a0It is artistically uncompromising.<\/p>\n

Over time – and as you start to realise that the rest of pre-school TV isn’t going to be like this – the format develops a strange fascination. \u00a0You start to get sucked in. \u00a0You are able to remember which\u00a0Tombliboo is which. \u00a0You begin to recognise the stock footage well enough to realise just how they got 100 episodes out of this. \u00a0Establishing sequences are reused with abandon. \u00a0And it’s easy to see\u00a0how episodes have been padded out to their running time. \u00a0Got a few seconds to fill? \u00a0Throw in the blossom footage. \u00a0A bit longer? \u00a0A\u00a0particularly elaborate version of the Gathering of the Pontipines . \u00a0Longer still? \u00a0Well, the “go to bed” routines that lead into the story recap are designed so that they can be\u00a0joined\u00a0in progress whenever the edit requires – if you see a version where Upsy Daisy is chasing her bed for ever, or Makka Pakka carefully puts his trolley back in the garage, or\u00a0god help us the Tombliboos clean their teeth, then\u00a0you’re\u00a0coming in right at the start, and this episode must have run really short. \u00a0Oh, and\u00a0often everyone gathers at the gazebo to do a dance before bedtime; that’s the same footage in virtually every episode where it appears.<\/p>\n

(Plus, of course, the opening credits are long and the wind-down sequence is lengthy, and they’re the same in every episode – but this sort of lengthy tone-setting and sign-off is par for the course in children’s TV for creative reasons quite aside from its budgetary advantages.)<\/p>\n

You start to look at the credits. \u00a0How did they get Derek Jacobi as the narrator for this? \u00a0His gentle, reassuring tones are perfect, but adults can have hours of\u00a0diversion picturing the classically trained actor in a recording booth peering\u00a0quizzically at the script. \u00a0In fact, he will turn out to be only the first of the unlikely names to be found in the CBeebies credits.\u00a0\u00a0Why are two people credited with playing Tombliboo Ooo? \u00a0Ah, it’s because Isaac Blake quit during the production and unsuccessfully sued for unfair dismissal.<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0(Oddly, both Blake and his replacement Holly Denoon are credited for every episode – presumably\u00a0each of them appears in at least some of the commonly used stock footage.)<\/p>\n

Articles like that lead you, in turn, to\u00a0a newfound appreciation of the practical difficulties of actually performing in these shows, because apparently those costumes have no eye holes<\/a>, and the actors have to rely on video screens inside the head, which aren’t even necessarily showing their characters’ view. \u00a0\u00a0At this point, pretty much anything beyond walking into shot starts to look a lot more impressive. \u00a0Whoever decided that Makka Pakka, in his particularly restrictive costume, should have to spin around during his opening dance was clearly\u00a0some sort of bastard – and they must have had a hell of a time filming it, because even one of the stock\u00a0versions of his intro, used in episode after episode, has him visibly staggering to retain his balance. \u00a0Only if you’re looking for it, mind you. \u00a0But after a while you’ll be looking for these things.<\/p>\n

So while\u00a0In The Night Garden<\/em> may\u00a0not be entertaining for adults as such, that doesn’t stop it offering plenty of fascination in its way. \u00a0And of course, if it’s working,\u00a0you\u00a0should find yourself watching it with a fascinated child\u00a0taking his first steps into understanding visual storytelling. \u00a0That goes a long way in itself. \u00a0But\u00a0Night Garden<\/em> is an extreme case of downplaying character and story in favour of\u00a0a\u00a0pure aesthetic vision. \u00a0It’s not entirely alone in taking this approach –\u00a0Baby Jake<\/em> looks like a fever dream on first viewing\u00a0– but it’s at the far end of the spectrum.<\/p>\n

Next time, a more conventional approach:\u00a0Waybuloo.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a new parent paying serious attention to CBeebies for the first time, you\u00a0may well find yourself starting with\u00a0In The Night Garden. \u00a0Not only is it a global success, but it’s aimed at the very youngest of children. Your initial reaction is\u00a0likely to be horror at the prospect of\u00a0watching this on a regular basis. \u00a0Here […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-watch-with-father"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3173"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3173\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3181,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3173\/revisions\/3181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}