Read All About It!

i am on the look-out for anything and everything i can find on he subject of "read all about it". even if you are just someone else who watched the show. i loved this show when i watched it as a kid in atlanta, and in my whole life, have found only one person who watched it as well. feel free to e-mail me with any information you have. just title the email "read all about it"

A horror TV series that's completely educational? Lol. Only in Canada! Read All About It (1979 – 1983) is a science-fiction fantasy television series for children. It is a 2 season series and is placed in the town of Herbertville. It is about a coach house where a young boy, Chris' uncle mysteriously disappears leaving behind not only the coach house but two artificial intelligence robots including Theta and Otto. Theta is a computer that can communicate through talking via an integrated monitor and Otto is a device that can communicate by having his thoughts outputted on paper. A teleportation device is also discovered that can transport Chris and his friends to the planet Trialveron. Chris and his friends set up a newspaper called The Herbertville Chronicle and use the coach house as headquarters while unearthing an alien plot to destroy earth.

Read All About it was produced by TV Ontario and is a Canadian Educational Film. Each episodes is about 13 minutes in length and the series focuses on the main theme of encouraging viewers to read and write and think for themselves. Cast includes Craig Collard, Lydia Zajc, Stacey Arnold and Sean Hewitt. Michael Dwyer came on crew for the second season. The series is scary, fun and highly educational. I've re-watched the entire series recently as an adult, and it's still just as delightful.

I remember watching it in 8th grade; the year was 1989 and not in a reading class. My history class. We watched it because my teacher was just slack like that. But I really enjoyed the show.

Out of the blue a few weeks ago, I thought about "Read All About It". It's interesting in the 80s that a lot of the educational shows on American PBS were Canadian shows. But I have to admit, they were cool.

And there's this other sci-fi-type PBS show about reading that was American way. The main character is a librarian and something kind of catastrophe was about to happen, but a mysterious man puts her in some kind of deep sleep/suspended animation and then centuries later, she is awaken to a future Earth. It's kins like a strange mixture of "Escape from New York", "The Warriors" and a few other movies together. I can't think of the name of the show.

Man oh man, I can't believe I'm actually gonna comment of this! Welp, here it goes. I remember one summer day during 1979 that the first pilot aired for Read All about It! The original cast was much older with the exception of the boy and possibly the girl too who carried over into the eventual series itself. I recall a young teen being trapped in time, always on the run and not exactly sure of his whereabouts. This was where his friends would haplessly look through the monitor of him running for his life, trying to deduce where geographically and which era historically he was trapped in.

It was captivating! It had all the makings of a cool detective show and sure enough, the final product hit the airwaves a short time after. There must be a list of all the TV Ontario programming and cast lists to their incredible array of educational shows. All us Generation X'ers would be interested to read a possible 'Where are they now?' section just for fun. Too bad kids nowadays don't have half the quality shows we had back in the late 70's/early 80's. They're missing out on some of the most insightful educational shows in quite a while.

wow, this is great. i hadn't thought about this show in years and years when suddenly the word "intricacy" pops into my head and it all comes flooding back. i loved this show when i was a kid (and i completely agree with the dr. who analogy). the production values were cheap but effective (considering the age of the viewing audience), but the storytelling was the most important aspect. these folks really knew how to engage the viewer (i.e. the average 5 to 10 year-old) in a very adult way. i'll bet that if i had the chance to see these episodes again, they would still stand up. its good to see that such an obscure little show still has some fans more than twenty years later. perhaps there will be a DVD release someday...