Justin’s House<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Gigglebiz<\/em> is basically the\u00a0Fast Show<\/em> and\u00a0Little Britain <\/em>format, adapted for the very young. \u00a0Which is\u00a0less\u00a0modification than you might think. \u00a0Yes, you’ve got to make\u00a0sure that all the material is kiddie-suitable – and that\u00a0isn’t just a matter of\u00a0being\u00a0pre-watershed, it also means avoiding reference points that won’t mean anything to\u00a0them. \u00a0But\u00a0Gigglebiz<\/em> is pitching itself at the older end of CBeebies’ age range, so it’s assuming that the kids at least know some of the basic tropes. \u00a0And if they don’t, they will by\u00a0episode six.<\/p>\nIn fact, the\u00a0format lends itself to children’s TV. \u00a0Recurring characters, each with endless variations on a central gag – that’s\u00a0what\u00a0British weeklies like the\u00a0Beano<\/em>\u00a0were built on. \u00a0It also means you get to re-use loads of sets and locations, which is no doubt great news for the production accountant. \u00a0\u00a0I suspect the show still\u00a0has\u00a0a problem that’s common with low-budget sketch shows, namely that it\u00a0has to use pretty much everything it\u00a0films – it can be patchy, and every so often something\u00a0really dodgy makes air. \u00a0But\u00a0the general hit rate is respectable.<\/p>\nWhat there isn’t, oddly enough, is much in the way of children. \u00a0There are cut-ins of children telling jokes, but that’s usually about a minute per episode. \u00a0The actual sketches avoid\u00a0anything\u00a0based on school, playground or family. \u00a0Instead, like most adult sketch shows,\u00a0Gigglebiz\u00a0<\/em>goes with adults, mostly either childlike or incompetent. \u00a0\u00a0So D.I.Y. Dan’s enthusiasm is undimmed by his failure to carry out any of the narrator’s instructions properly. \u00a0Captain Adorable is a quixotic superhero whose butler and sidekick quietly humour him as he “battles” mundane situations which he mis-reads as dangerous threats. \u00a0\u00a0Robin Hood’s attempts to romance Maid Marian are perpetually sabotaged by the sodding minstrel who insists on providing a running commentary in song.<\/p>\nAnn Teak is an\u00a0Antiques Roadshow<\/em> expert who knows nothing, destroys everything she touches, and cruises obliviously through life as if she was doing a brilliant job. \u00a0(There’s also another element with her sketches, which is that despite her\u00a0dangerous ineptitude being\u00a0plain to everyone, the British won’t challenge her – or if anyone does,\u00a0nobody will back them up –\u00a0preferring to shuffle\u00a0meekly forward to succumb to her\u00a0“advice” while she retains her unearned authority through sheer force of personality.) \u00a0There’s some surreal stuff too, like a pantomime dame who wanders around the real world trying to react to everything as if it were a\u00a0stock pantomime plot. \u00a0What’s most striking about\u00a0Gigglebiz<\/em>, though, is that\u00a0Justin Fletcher really does have tremendous range as a sketch comedian. \u00a0The guy is a chameleon – he really does have the skill of defining his\u00a0characters in voice and body language, and keeping them all distinct, even as the numbers proliferate through the series.<\/p>\nJustin’s House<\/em> is a\u00a0rather different beast – a full\u00a0fledged sitcom, but one for a live studio audience of children. \u00a0And\u00a0that studio audience is important, because\u00a0it’s essentially a stage show on camera, with singalongs, performers wandering into the audience (or entering through it), kids in the front row being enlisted to help people\u00a0clamber onto the stage, and so forth. \u00a0This sort of thing isn’t completely unprecedented in sitcoms – see\u00a0It’s Garry Shandling’s Show<\/em> or\u00a0Sean’s Show<\/em> – but\u00a0Justin’s House<\/em>\u00a0isn’t doing it to be meta, it’s doing it because that’s how kids’ stage shows work. \u00a0Audience participation. \u00a0With a real audience.<\/p>\nThe Justin of Justin’s House<\/em> is a cheerful, occasionally self-centred child-man who (as is standard operating procedure) tends to leave a trail of disaster in his wake. \u00a0He shares his house with a robot butler called Robert (a parent figure, in other words) and a puppet thing called Little Monster who’s basically there as a force of anarchy to either screw up or advance the plot as required. \u00a0\u00a0Depending on which series you’re watching, there’s also\u00a0an explorer neighbour who’s\u00a0invariably just come back from an adventure with a fresh macguffin in her rucksack, or a delivery girl who they quietly wrote out after series 2. \u00a0Plots typically involve\u00a0things like Justin\u00a0spontaneously deciding to take up mountain climbing,\u00a0or everyone attempting to build a beach in the living room, or a guest star from another\u00a0CBeebies show enlisting their help.<\/p>\nThat last point makes\u00a0Justin’s House<\/em> the nexus of the wider CBeebies universe, because, as I think I’ve mentioned\u00a0a while back, CBeebies can be a bit pantheistic, with a core of\u00a0presenters from in-house shows making guest appearances in\u00a0one another’s programmes and getting together periodically to put on the annual pantomime. \u00a0Get to host a show\u00a0on CBeebies and you can pretty much guarantee a guest\u00a0appearance on\u00a0Justin’s House<\/em> will be thrown in\u00a0as a bonus. \u00a0Mr Bloom, the pirates from Swashbuckle,\u00a0Nina\u00a0from\u00a0Nina and the Neurons<\/em>, they’ve all wandered through the door. \u00a0In return, Robert the Robot\u00a0– who really is excellent in his own right – serves as\u00a0Justin’s House<\/em>‘s ambassador to the rest of\u00a0CBeebies, representing the show in things like\u00a0the aforementioned pantomimes, the CBeebies prom, and\u00a0astronomy week.<\/p>\nIt’s an ensemble show, but it’s anchored by the charisma of Justin Fletcher as its frontman. \u00a0From time to time\u00a0there’s\u00a0the occasional gag targeted at parents (they surely don’t think\u00a0four year olds are going to recognise an Ian McCaskill impression), or a scene that misses the mark,\u00a0but the vast majority of it is\u00a0precisely tooled children’s entertainment, honed by people who obviously know how a live show works and have figured out how to translate that to television without just pointing a camera at a stage. \u00a0It’s\u00a0got a bit of\u00a0anarchy, it’s got the slapstick, it’s got the characters, but there’s also just something loveable about Justin as an entertainer. \u00a0The kids\u00a0are thrilled by him. \u00a0You can’t teach that.<\/p>\n
Plenty of successful kids presenters have\u00a0tried to make the transition to\u00a0adult TV, with varying degrees of success. \u00a0Justin Fletcher, by\u00a0all\u00a0accounts, has no interest in that. \u00a0This is his thing. \u00a0It’s his calling. \u00a0He’s the biggest star in his field, and even in a multi-channel era,\u00a0he’s going to wind up as a shared\u00a0reference point for a generation. \u00a0Who wouldn’t be happy with that?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Next time: Katie Morag.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Comedy for the very young. \u00a0It’s not as easy as it sounds. \u00a0They’re unforgiving. \u00a0They don’t\u00a0laugh politely. \u00a0There is no hiding place. \u00a0If you’re not getting it right, you will know . Last time, we looked at Something Special,\u00a0a robustly\u00a0cheering exercise in good-naturedness, inclusiveness and communication. \u00a0But that’s just part of the empire of Justin […]<\/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-3325","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\/3325","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=3325"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3325\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3327,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3325\/revisions\/3327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}