Les petits génies

I am really trying to remember 20 years ago to this show. It was very much a spin-off of the success of War Games. Richie had a computer that could do almost anything. It was built from a lot of spare parts that must have been around the studio. If it could flash, it went in the computer.

At the time I loved the show because I was young and though computers were neat. I would like to see the show again just to see what I think now.

The thing that I remember most about the show is that EVERYTHING seemed to be run by computers. In one episode they were locked in some room. In that room was some discarded terminal that they were able to connect to the building sprinkler system and set it off. Deus ex Machina situations like this happened way too often...and Richie was always like MacGuyver with a keyboard.

Still...I remember liking the show back then.

I was 13 when this show aired, and remember really liking it. It was well written (at least to a mature 13 year old), and I looked forward to it every week. The problem was, the programming geniuses at CBS blew it. It was on one week, preempted the next 2, moved to a different night, preempted again. It never stayed in a location long enough to gain any audience following. Here I was TRYING to watch the thing and they made it quite difficult. I remember being quite frustrated and ticked off when it was cancelled.

It would be interesting to see it again today, 20 years later, and see how it compared to other shows of its day.

The theme music for the series was Gioachino Rossini's La Gazza Ladra (The Thieving Magpie)Overture.

I remember scenes of a floppy disc drive spinning up, the head loading and then doing a seek - all very tech and enjoyable.

I recall plot holes even though I was just post teenage at the time. Blowing up (zooming in) on a photograph to extract detail below pixel size gains was one.

It deserved repeating a few times but I felt that it was ignored as the powers that control TV programming seldom (at that time) understood that tech series had a following, as we have seen with the Star trek and Stargate spinoffs.

Hello,

I've been following the discussion with interest - Whiz Kids was my favourite show on British TV when I was growing up. This and Tron left a big impression!

Just a quick note: the music isn't Rossini, it's adapted from Mozart's 'Elvira Madigan' (Piano Concerto No. 21 in C Major). It's an amalgam of highlights from Part I of the concerto.

My favourite theme of all time :)

I do love Whiz Kids. I wish they'd release the DVD already!

• Dave

I probably haven't seen this show since 1983, but I still remember it. I don't recall when I started watching. I think possibly some summer friends whose father owned a small electronics equipment chain recommended it. I seem to recall also that Matthew Laborteaux was on the cover of an early children's computer magazine called K-Power I initially learned about, I think, from scholastic book fairs at my elementary school. I recall the magazine had a BASIC program you could type into your computer to have it simulate the exchange between Richie and his talking computer during the opening of the show. K-Power later got absorbed into Family Computer just as a small section, and then Family Computing changed its name to something else and dropped the K-Power section at which I stopped subscribing.

Incredibly, I can still replay the instrumental theme song to this show in my head. But apart from these bits of trivia, I don't remember the show itself too well!