{"id":3378,"date":"2016-03-08T22:10:03","date_gmt":"2016-03-08T22:10:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=3378"},"modified":"2016-03-08T22:10:03","modified_gmt":"2016-03-08T22:10:03","slug":"watch-with-father-10-katie-morag","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=3378","title":{"rendered":"Watch With Father #10: Katie Morag"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Katie Morag! \u00a0Far away,\u00a0across the ocean! \u00a0Katie Morag! \u00a0Over the sea to Struay! \u00a0Dee dum de de dum de de dum de de dum&#8230; \u00a0actually, hold on. \u00a0Here&#8217;s the video.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/AcYGNwIxBso?rel=0\" width=\"400\" height=\"225\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>So last time round, I looked at\u00a0<em>Balamory<\/em>, CBeebies&#8217; other show set in the Highlands. \u00a0<em>Balamory<\/em> was in part a reaction against the likes of\u00a0<em>Teletubbies<\/em> and\u00a0<em>Tweenies, <\/em>and\u00a0it was certainly\u00a0more down to earth than either. \u00a0But it was hardly rigorous in its quest for realism. \u00a0The village was ultimately a format device, and if half the cast were\u00a0English or American actors\u00a0using\u00a0their own accents,\u00a0or the occasional shot revealed the\u00a0Glaswegian\u00a0tenement block across the road from the nursery, well, nobody was losing much sleep about that.<\/p>\n<p><em>Katie Morag<\/em> is another matter. \u00a0It&#8217;s an adaptation of a series of books by Mairi Hedderwick,\u00a0originally published\u00a0sporadically between 1984 and 2007. \u00a0She\u00a0lived on the\u00a0island of Coll,\u00a0and\u00a0<em>Katie Morag<\/em> is a show that loves its Hebridean setting and\u00a0remote island community. \u00a0This is the small town utopia where everyone knows everyone else because there literally aren&#8217;t that many people to know. \u00a0And\u00a0the show takes its setting seriously, decamping to the Hebrides\u00a0to film.<br \/>\n<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>This is not the\u00a0only way that\u00a0<em>Katie Morag<\/em>\u00a0sits at the other end of the spectrum from\u00a0<em>Balamory<\/em>. \u00a0It&#8217;s also\u00a0right at up the top end of the CBeebies age range\u00a0(which is officially six), to the point where it also airs on\u00a0sister channel CBBC. \u00a0In fact, the second series apparently has a couple of episodes filmed exclusively for CBBC. \u00a0There aren&#8217;t many shows commissioned\u00a0to straddle the two stations &#8211; off the top of my head,\u00a0<em>Jamillah &amp; Aladdin<\/em> comes to mind.<\/p>\n<p>Regardless,\u00a0<em>Katie Morag<\/em> is a lovely show,\u00a0even if it&#8217;s probably over the heads of a good chunk of the CBeebies audience. \u00a0It is, simply, the stories of Katie Morag McColl, whose parents run the island shop and post office,\u00a0growing up on an island that&#8217;s\u00a0tiny by most standards, but still full of\u00a0wonders for her. \u00a0Much of the time, the show is mainly interested in how she deals with the adults. \u00a0What\u00a0really marks\u00a0<em>Katie Morag<\/em> as a gear shift from the rest of CBeebies is that\u00a0those adults are not just adults as\u00a0young children see them, but proper characters with full blown inner lives. \u00a0There&#8217;s a romantic subplot with two pensioners. \u00a0There&#8217;s passive-aggressive defensiveness about the\u00a0wider\u00a0world.<\/p>\n<p>Katie&#8217;s relationship with her\u00a0Grannie Island, a tractor-driving crofter (as opposed to Grannie Mainland,\u00a0from the\u00a0city) is placed front and centre. \u00a0Supposedly,\u00a0Mairi Hedderwick&#8217;s original idea was that the character would be male, and the\u00a0American publishers didn&#8217;t like that\u00a0for whatever reason. \u00a0But she&#8217;s a better character as a woman, if only because a male version would be much closer to a stock character. \u00a0She&#8217;s much more effective\u00a0as\u00a0a\u00a0female, especially\u00a0since it then allows for the\u00a0contrast with the much more conventional Grannie Mainland.<\/p>\n<p>As\u00a0a seven-year-old or thereabouts,\u00a0Katie tends not to\u00a0fully\u00a0understand the adult characters. \u00a0Sometimes\u00a0things get explained to her pretty quickly; sometimes it&#8217;s just an aside; sometimes the adults run rings around her; and sometimes she just misreads things disastrously. \u00a0So it&#8217;s pretty\u00a0clear that Grannie Island finds Grannie Mainland a bit wearing, but\u00a0Katie\u00a0tends not to pick up on that. \u00a0Or, in one episode,\u00a0she decides that the perfect way to cheer up Grannie Island would be to engineer a reunion with her estranged husband (who left the island), because what could possibly go wrong there? \u00a0The scene that follows sums up the show&#8217;s style: no fireworks, just excruciatingly\u00a0awkward pauses as\u00a0the adults are perfectly\u00a0polite, but can&#8217;t conceal their lack of enthusiasm from a disappointed, confused Katie.<\/p>\n<p>On CBeebies, the assumed audience is\u00a0actually slightly younger than Katie. \u00a0On CBBC, of course, they&#8217;re mostly slightly older. \u00a0Perhaps the thinking is that dramatic irony helps\u00a0to bridge the audience gap (as well as maximise the parent-entertaining potential); if you&#8217;re not old enough to get the irony, Katie just works as a straightforward\u00a0point of view character.<\/p>\n<p>Generally speaking, I&#8217;m not\u00a0planning to write about shows\u00a0where\u00a0child actors feature prominently,\u00a0but I&#8217;ll make an exception for\u00a0<em>Katie Morag<\/em> because Cherry Campbell is genuinely great. \u00a0Though she gets\u00a0a lot\u00a0of narration, she&#8217;s at her best\u00a0acting opposite the adults, and\u00a0when she&#8217;s just watching stuff or reacting to it. \u00a0Her instincts there are pretty fantastic. \u00a0She was seven when they made the first series, with no acting background, and\u00a0she really does have presence.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/wPhdpDlps-s?rel=0\" width=\"400\" height=\"225\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/EEnUrUuZVlE?rel=0\" width=\"400\" height=\"225\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Katie\u00a0has a younger brother, Liam, who\u00a0for obvious reasons doesn&#8217;t contribute much. \u00a0The show works around that rather nicely, keeping him as a blankly impassive presence\u00a0in a\u00a0tiger costume. \u00a0There&#8217;s a cute running joke that Katie&#8217;s narration persists in talking about him\u00a0as if he was much more active and opinionated\u00a0than we ever see any evidence of.<\/p>\n<p>There are, of course, limits to\u00a0<em>Katie Morag<\/em>&#8216;s commitment to realism. \u00a0It&#8217;s a comedy drama for young children, after all. \u00a0It&#8217;s happy to be a little bit nebulous about precisely when it&#8217;s set &#8211; the earliest books are\u00a0some thirty years old, after all. \u00a0Officially it&#8217;s the present day, but the show only brings up things like e-mail or mobile phones\u00a0when it really feels obliged to explain why they aren&#8217;t being used. \u00a0Then there&#8217;s\u00a0the size of the community. \u00a0The map in the opening credits says\u00a0that the entire island population is &#8220;approx 30&#8221;, which rather begs the question of how\u00a0the village shop and post office are supporting a family of five (a baby shows up during series 1), let alone where the other kids in the school come from. \u00a0There&#8217;s some artistic licence here, I suspect, minimising the size of the population to keep everything closed and self-contained, but keeping some of the features\u00a0of the real island of Coll, whose population is actually closer to 200. \u00a0(The show was filmed on the Isle of Lewis, which is a bustling metropolis in comparison.)<\/p>\n<p>The show\u00a0also keeps in touch with its\u00a0storybook roots by rounding out its series\u00a0with several episodes under the &#8220;Granny Island&#8217;s Ceilidh&#8221; sub-banner. \u00a0These are effectively bottle episodes, disguised by having virtually the entire regular cast in the framing sequence. \u00a0The conceit is that\u00a0the islanders have a regular party at Granny Island&#8217;s house where they take turns to tell stories about the island. \u00a0Effectively it&#8217;s &#8220;Tales of Struay&#8221;,\u00a0with the adults\u00a0each getting an episode to simply tell a story in monologue, accompanied by spot illustrations from Hedderwick. \u00a0The storytelling format\u00a0still holds up &#8211; we&#8217;ll get to\u00a0<em>Old Jack&#8217;s Boat<\/em> at some point &#8211; and these episodes tend to be a pleasant change of pace, even if they&#8217;re a bit light on actual Katie Morag.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em>Katie Morag<\/em> is a great show which, in\u00a0a pre-multichannel era, would probably have\u00a0aired on Sunday afternoons and been billed as family entertainment. \u00a0These days, viewers without small kids are unlikely to stumble upon its gentle charms, which is a shame. \u00a0It has\u00a0good stories,\u00a0a great cast, and a beautiful island. \u00a0And it&#8217;s funny.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s also the exit route out of CBeebies and up to the wider world of television, which means it&#8217;s time to turn back for now. \u00a0Next time, something entirely different:\u00a0<em>Chuggington<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Katie Morag! \u00a0Far away,\u00a0across the ocean! \u00a0Katie Morag! \u00a0Over the sea to Struay! \u00a0Dee dum de de dum de de dum de de dum&#8230; \u00a0actually, hold on. \u00a0Here&#8217;s the video. So last time round, I looked at\u00a0Balamory, CBeebies&#8217; other show set in the Highlands. \u00a0Balamory was in part a reaction against the likes of\u00a0Teletubbies and\u00a0Tweenies, [&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-3378","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\/3378","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=3378"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3378\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3380,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3378\/revisions\/3380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}