About as near to perfection in children TV as you can get
Impossible to watch or even think about Ivor the Engine without a warm glow developing inside. And its not just nostalgia, my own children love the tales on video and in the books as well.
Simple animation, short stories, brilliantly told by Oliver Postgate - the master of this form of children's TV which has, regrettably, died out since Watch with Mother and the pre-evening news filler slot that these sort of things were designed for disappeared.
In retrospect very little actually happens over the 40 or so episodes, though we go get an elephant, a dragon and a sheepdog playing their parts. It plays on an English view of life in Wales, but exceedingly affectionately, with the choir being the beating heart of the small community. I guess it is sheer escapism and a hymn of praise for possibly a time (1950s?) that never really existed. You can over analyse such things. In the end I defy anyone, especially anyone who grew up in the 1960s-early 1980s, to watch these without a lump in the throat and a tear in the eye.
Simple animation, short stories, brilliantly told by Oliver Postgate - the master of this form of children's TV which has, regrettably, died out since Watch with Mother and the pre-evening news filler slot that these sort of things were designed for disappeared.
In retrospect very little actually happens over the 40 or so episodes, though we go get an elephant, a dragon and a sheepdog playing their parts. It plays on an English view of life in Wales, but exceedingly affectionately, with the choir being the beating heart of the small community. I guess it is sheer escapism and a hymn of praise for possibly a time (1950s?) that never really existed. You can over analyse such things. In the end I defy anyone, especially anyone who grew up in the 1960s-early 1980s, to watch these without a lump in the throat and a tear in the eye.
- johnbirch-2
- 24. Nov. 2014