{"id":3267,"date":"2015-11-15T21:34:20","date_gmt":"2015-11-15T21:34:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=3267"},"modified":"2015-11-15T21:34:20","modified_gmt":"2015-11-15T21:34:20","slug":"watch-with-father-5-swashbuckle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=3267","title":{"rendered":"Watch With Father #5: Swashbuckle"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;A band of naughty pirates took some jewels from me \/ I hid on board their pirate ship and sailed on out to sea \/ But they weren&#8217;t watching\u00a0where they went and shipwrecked on the sand \/ I want to win my treasure back &#8211; will you lend me a hand&#8230;?&#8221; \u00a0This is\u00a0the theme song for\u00a0<em>Swashbuckle<\/em>, one of the\u00a0catchiest on British TV.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/2wouqLq_vlk?rel=0\" width=\"400\" height=\"225\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>While\u00a0<em>Kerwhizz<\/em>\u00a0apes the format of a\u00a0game show,\u00a0<em>Swashbuckle<\/em> actually is one. \u00a0That might seem like a very obvious thing to do &#8211; you&#8217;ve got a whole network to fill, surely there&#8217;s space for a game show. \u00a0But think\u00a0about it further. \u00a0This is a channel whose\u00a0target audience runs up age 7 at a push\u00a0(after that, you&#8217;re officially CBBC&#8217;s problem). \u00a0Game shows with\u00a0older children have been around\u00a0for decades, but\u00a0this age range is another matter.<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->There are\u00a0a lot of challenges in designing a show like this, but consider two of the really obvious ones. \u00a0You need a game which is simple enough for the kids to play, yet also entertaining for the spectators. \u00a0And what do you do about the whole &#8220;winners and losers&#8221; aspect of game shows, if\u00a0a typical contestant is going to be aged between five and seven?<\/p>\n<p>Well, the\u00a0answer to that\u00a0last question is that you don&#8217;t have the kids compete against each other, you have them work as a team to play against the show. \u00a0The format works like this. \u00a0As the opening\u00a0song explains, Gem has stowed away\u00a0with a bunch of pirates who have stolen her jewels and before\u00a0crashing onto a desert island. \u00a0On each show, four kids play games on Gem&#8217;s behalf against the pirates &#8211; Cook, Line and Captain Sinker\u00a0&#8211; to try and win back five of her jewels. \u00a0In the first two\u00a0rounds, if the kids win, they get a jewel back. \u00a0Then, in the final round, they\u00a0have to recover all the remaining jewels from the shipwreck &#8211; which\u00a0is basically a giant soft play structure &#8211; and get them back to\u00a0Gem before the clock\u00a0runs out. \u00a0So even if you lose both the first two rounds, you can still get all five jewels in the final. \u00a0If the team recover all five jewels,\u00a0they\u00a0win, Gem gives them\u00a0each a prop jewel to take home, and one of the pirates walks the plank into &#8220;the Ship&#8217;s Mess&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Do not think too hard about the back story. \u00a0Yes, there are some fairly gaping logic holes, not least &#8220;why\u00a0did the pirates agree to this arrangement?&#8221; \u00a0But it&#8217;s\u00a0a game show set-up,\u00a0it doesn&#8217;t need to make sense. \u00a0Asking why\u00a0exactly Captain Sinker was willing to put her hard-stolen jewels on the line in this curious &#8220;small children and plank-walking&#8221; arrangement\u00a0is like asking about the inner life of the ghosts in Pacman. \u00a0 It&#8217;s not the point.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s\u00a0not too hard to\u00a0imagine how the show\u00a0ended up with a lot of these elements. \u00a0Quiz? \u00a0No,\u00a0<em>Kerwhizz<\/em> already does\u00a0questions pitched at this age range, and besides, a quiz pitched at very young kids\u00a0is probably\u00a0going to be uncomfortably competitive, and it isn&#8217;t a\u00a0spectator sport. \u00a0So go\u00a0physical, then. \u00a0But\u00a0heck, we&#8217;re on CBeebies, we&#8217;re supposed to have an educational component. \u00a0Um&#8230; every game is designed to feature an element from the primary school PE curriculum? \u00a0Sure. \u00a0Pirate theme? \u00a0Pirates are good. \u00a0But hold on, pirates are baddies,\u00a0so we&#8217;d better make them the opposition. \u00a0And\u00a0since they&#8217;re going to have to compete against small children, we&#8217;d better make sure they&#8217;re\u00a0ultimately non-threatening halfwits.<\/p>\n<p>So far, so obvious. \u00a0You could have worked out all of that\u00a0and still\u00a0wound up with a\u00a0very ordinary piece of television. \u00a0But\u00a0<em>Swashbuckle<\/em> is great.<\/p>\n<p>Part of it is that\u00a0they&#8217;ve really committed to the whole pirate\/desert island motif. \u00a0Strictly speaking, there&#8217;s nothing inherently pirate-y about most of these games, but boy,\u00a0they&#8217;ve\u00a0made sure that the\u00a0theme pervades everything\u00a0on the show, not just in arbitrary labelling, but in the whole set design. \u00a0And a big part of that is the characters. \u00a0<em>Swashbuckle<\/em> sensibly doesn&#8217;t ask much of its contestants in terms of talking on camera &#8211; even their introduction at the start of the show is dealt with largely\u00a0in voice over. \u00a0Instead, it leaves Gem and the pirates to provide the personality, with a little story arc being set up in Gem and Sinker&#8217;s linking segments, and leading into a\u00a0slapstick sketch in every\u00a0episode between rounds 2 and 3.<\/p>\n<p>This works brilliantly, because\u00a0it&#8217;s well written and wonderfully cast. \u00a0Joseph Elliot and Richard David-Caine, as Cook and Line,\u00a0are talented comedians, but also\u00a0perfectly pitch the task of\u00a0playing\u00a0games against the child contestants. \u00a0Obviously,\u00a0their role is\u00a0more about calibrating the difficulty than actually\u00a0trying to win,\u00a0but it&#8217;s one thing to recognise that, and another to do it convincingly while in character as two giddily enthusiastic nitwits. \u00a0They&#8217;re so utterly\u00a0inept as to avoid coming across as genuinely threatening, but they are\u00a0also, without fail,\u00a0<em>just obstructive enough<\/em>. \u00a0Ella Kenion, as Captain Sinker,\u00a0is\u00a0the relatively sensible one who&#8217;s stuck with shepherding two idiots. \u00a0She&#8217;s in full-on pantomime villain mode,\u00a0exasperated by\u00a0her useless henchmen,\u00a0horrified whenever the kids seem to be winning,\u00a0unable to conceal her glee whenever something actually goes right, and generally gloating\u00a0about how sure she is to win.<\/p>\n<p>Gem has the trickier task. \u00a0When I first saw the show, my immediate reaction was that she was\u00a0overdoing it a bit. \u00a0I was wrong. \u00a0She&#8217;s\u00a0playing the straight man to the three pirates, but they&#8217;re playing it broad, so she has to match them, which pretty much calls for a <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Principal_boy\" target=\"_blank\">principal boy<\/a> approach. \u00a0On top of that, she has to host the show,\u00a0interact with the kids (usually while keeping eye contact with the camera),\u00a0and guide them during the games. \u00a0In the absence of anyone else, she also has to act as referee by keeping the kids within the rules. \u00a0It&#8217;s a lot to juggle and\u00a0she does it fantastically well. \u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.gemmahunt.com\/parties.html\" target=\"_blank\">According to her website, she&#8217;s still available for children&#8217;s parties.<\/a> \u00a0I imagine\u00a0they&#8217;re great.<\/p>\n<p>You may be wondering:\u00a0what happens if the team lose? \u00a0Is that actually possible? \u00a0When I first saw the show, I assumed that the answer had to be &#8220;no&#8221;. \u00a0The clock &#8211; represented as a tentacle crawling across the bottom of the screen &#8211; looked like it could surely\u00a0be manipulated in post to fit whatever they chose to announce. \u00a0But this is the BBC, and if it is advertised as a game, then by golly, it will be a game. \u00a0Teams regularly lose one or other of the opening games and if it&#8217;s looking close, Gem does start giving out actual times on the clock. \u00a0Understandably, the pirates celebrate their\u00a0wins with childlike glee, and\u00a0Sinker gets to do a bit of gloating. \u00a0Usually, this seems\u00a0to result in the\u00a0jewels being left in easier places in the final round.<\/p>\n<p>But even so, it comes as a surprise the first time you encounter an\u00a0episode where the clock\u00a0actually runs out. \u00a0There aren&#8217;t many of these episodes, but they do exist. \u00a0It\u00a0clearly isn&#8217;t the result that the production team is hoping\u00a0for, but they\u00a0<em>do<\/em> want the games to be close enough to have some actual tension, and they&#8217;re prepared to live with the consequence that, once in a while, the kids\u00a0will lose. \u00a0Outright losses are rare, but close calls are fairly common. \u00a0Needless to say, this makes for much better television.<\/p>\n<p>When the kids lose,\u00a0of course, the show can&#8217;t end with the usual\u00a0&#8220;walk the plank&#8221; routine, so instead Gem congratulates the kids on how hard they&#8217;ve tried, and\u00a0the\u00a0pirates do another brief sketch to end the\u00a0show &#8211; usually resulting in Sinker getting her\u00a0comeuppance in some\u00a0other way. \u00a0These sketches always call back to the main skit from earlier\u00a0in the episode, so apparently somebody is writing one of these for every episode, even though they are hardly ever called upon.<\/p>\n<p>This rather sums up the pride that seems to be taken in the show; they could easily have gotten away with a few generic\u00a0segments to be wheeled out when they were needed, but nope. \u00a0It&#8217;s a show that feels like the\u00a0work of people who know\u00a0they&#8217;ve\u00a0hit on something that the kids are going to remember fondly, and who want to live up to that.<\/p>\n<p>Next time,\u00a0the show that currently airs immediately after\u00a0<em>Swashbuckle<\/em> &#8211;\u00a0<em>What&#8217;s the Big Idea?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;A band of naughty pirates took some jewels from me \/ I hid on board their pirate ship and sailed on out to sea \/ But they weren&#8217;t watching\u00a0where they went and shipwrecked on the sand \/ I want to win my treasure back &#8211; will you lend me a hand&#8230;?&#8221; \u00a0This is\u00a0the theme song [&hellip;]<\/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-3267","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\/3267","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=3267"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3267\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3269,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3267\/revisions\/3269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}