In the Night Garden...

Who said children need to be educated 100% of the time? This show is just 100% entertainment for children, which is fine. They love it, I love it, it's great. Kids don't need to be taught something every minute of every day. What's wrong with the wonder and fantasy that this brilliant show brings? Let the children be children and enjoy the adventures. On a different note, if there's one thing I don't like about the show, it's the repetition. Too much of the same thing too often (the Ponti-Pines for example). Still, apart from that, the fantasy setting works extremely well, making me wonder where it's shot: must be someplace very beautiful, that's for sure!

There seems to be quite a consensus that this doesn't have any educational value. Such a stance presumes that kids need explicit teaching and preaching. Either you need to include an alphabet in your song like Sesame Street or have some obvious moral conclusion. How silly.

Kids learn by what they see of how things are abstracted. If they are abstracted by nitwits, then they learn to be nitwits who cannot think critically. I don't have a TeeVee in my house, but I do allow my one and two year olds to watch this, because it has some very clever ideas in it.

Oh, the ideas are not in the story at all. Good ideas seldom can be; they are in how you get to the thing in the first place. Consider:

The thing is nested in a vignette of a toddler's hand being stroked to sleep. That hand morphs to a boat in another enclosing situation, one that is amazingly rich. A simple being pulls down his sail at the end of a day. The boat becomes his bed and the sail his blanket. in this level of reality, the boat then drifts and we transition to yet another layer under reality. The stars become blossoms that surround and cover the night garden, where most of our time is spent.

If you think kids don't get and appreciate this deep folding of reality, you haven't been around bright kids. It isn't what happens in the world of the story so much for them, but what that world is, how it works and how they get there.

Once in the garden, we have some events, which one could think of as a day in the life of these characters. Several things go on, only a few of these make complete sense. Many things that happen, just happen without cause or consequence. Again, think like a child and how they see the world.

Then finally we have the fourth inner world: the story we have seen in the abstract garden is recounted in drawings. This follows Ted's Law of abstraction: the abstract distance between those drawings and the puppet/animated world is the same as between that world and ours.

The crossover character, Igglepiggle once in his dream world has only a few expressive dimensions. he squeaks and he falls down. He alone seems to be able to communicate with the narrator, a sort of higher self.

Yes, some of the characters and objects have winning appeal, but it is the way this layered world is built that I think can teach my kids something worthwhile.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

I see so many people saying that this is a brainless waste of childrens time. And they are right. But this is not trying to be one of those educational kids shows. Its a show that you put on before the kids are going to bed, or when they have too much energy. It calms the nerves, and the fact that they are able to do that consistantly for 100 epsiodes is a miracle. The best part is that adults can watch it too. The relaxing effect carries over for all ages, so its not a torture fest for the parents watching, but a enjoyable ride for everyone.

Also, i cannot gow tihout commenting on the names. Iggle Piggle? Makka Pakka? The nonky nonk. How do you even come up with this stuff. Would recomend, even if you dont have kids.

To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand In the Night Garden. The humor is extremely subtle, and without a solid grasp of theoretical physics most of the jokes will go over a typical viewer's head. There's also Makka Pakka's nihilistic outlook, which is deftly woven into his characterisation - his personal philosophy draws heavily from Narodnaya Volya literature, for instance. The fans understand this stuff; they have the intellectual capacity to truly appreciate the depths of these jokes, to realize that they're not just funny- they say something deep about LIFE. As a consequence people who dislike In the Night Garden truly ARE idiots- of course they wouldn't appreciate, for instance, the humour in Lord Pakka's existencial catchphrase "Makka Pakka," which itself is a cryptic reference to Turgenev's Russian epic Fathers and Sons. I'm smirking right now just imagining one of those addlepated simpletons scratching their heads in confusion as Andrew Davenport's genius unfolds itself on their television screens. What fools... how I pity them. 😂 And yes by the way, I DO have an In The Night Garden tattoo. And no, you cannot see it. It's for the ladies' eyes only- And even they have to demonstrate that they're within 5 IQ points of my own (preferably lower) beforehand.

This is a very strange show from an adult perspective, but after watching the entire first series, you actually start to like the characters and see far more depth than at first glance. However if you are aged 1-3, you will love this programme from the opening credits. The nursery rhyme theme tune and beautiful animation makes you actually take notice from the get-go.

The programme deals with a magical garden, that can only be visited at night, once you are asleep. There are several characters, but Igglepiggle, Upsy Daisy and Makka Pakka are the one you see most often. All of them have their own song that they sing when they appear on the screen, making them even more endearing to the younger viewer.

There is no real message or moral to each episode, just a lovely adventure for the viewer, young and old, to enjoy each time you visit the Night Garden.

I love this show and so does my 2 and a half year old daughter. I would recommend to anyone with tiny children.