GORTIMER GIBBON - La vita a Normal Street

A show that straddles reality and fantasy, it appealed to this adult, too. The fantasy comes in two packages: the first is that there is magic in this small town, mostly in misbehaving artifacts. The second fantasy is that it is a multicultural, poverty-free small town where everyone treats each other decently. It is not the real world, but it is the world I think we all wish we could inhabit.

While there is magic, there is plenty of science too, and science always trumps magic in the show. I was especially delighted that it is the girls who are whizzes at math and science. The boys are pleasant, funny, and have their own talents. The parents are loving, but also flawed, and with agendas of their own.

Emotional topics are brought to the fore a couple times, particularly issues of grief. But comedy reigns....comedy and a good heart.

Nice work from the kid actors, and I'm keeping an eye on David Bloom, who played one of the recurring secondary roles. I saw real depth and range in him.

I'll miss the kids of Normal Street. When Amazon gets it right, as they often do, they excel.

Okay, this maybe one of the most bizarre series I have seen its fairly amusing to watch (especially to children and I'd think adults too) as its light hearted and has a good morale behind it. Not to mention the acting is amazing unlike most new series I have seen recently and I hope it gets continued. Furthermore, it seems to be a unique series as the childlike viewpoint is rarely used apart from in two other films that I have seen so for that I rated it as 10/10. Also if you haven't seen it yet I recommend giving it a watch its not as bad as you first think as when I first saw it I thought it was just going to be childish to bother watching whereas I actually thoroughly enjoyed watching it; the unpredictable nature of it was hooking enough but the added humor was what made it brilliant. So please support this series so there can be more episode, thanks for reading. :)

This show is all about friendship and well behaved kids. It's decent and balanced and has no fuss. Every episode has a moral and being an adult I still enjoyed the kids show.

After 14 episodes of the first season, I am now comfortable in saying: Gortimer is smartly written, well acted, and solidly produced.

It transports one to a simpler, happier time, while still meaningful and relevant to the younger viewers. Each episode is a stand-alone tale that evokes the mysteries of childhood and--in what seems a lost art--manages to teach poignant and valuable lessons. Some episodes are more powerful and magical than others, but each one is satisfying in its own right.

This show is one-part "Eerie, Indiana," one-part Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and one-part its own wondrous thing.

There comes a point in most TV viewer's life where mainstream TV just decides it doesn't want to cater for you any longer. Either you got too old or you've finally wised up. Or you want something different.

One could be forgiven for assuming Gortimer Gibbon is presented as another run-of-the-mill children's show with an improbable plot/sequence of events and a load of incredibly irritating characters who don't talk but shout at each other across some garish looking set (ie any recent Nickelodeon production). Your worries are unfounded because in Gilbert nobody's irritating, the sets are vast majority exterior and any indoor sets are quite nice looking. And the plots are improbable (but grounded in reality) and wouldn't have been too far out of place in Eerie Indiana anyway.

While I am reminded of Eerie Indiana, Gortimer isn't quite as dark as Eerie was, not quite as surreal in various areas as Eerie was and is clearly not trying to be Eerie in new colours. Gortimer at least ties the premise and location down to a street or a specific town maybe, as opposed to Eerie which effectively suggested the entire state was off its trolley.

I hadn't realised when I first wrote this review that this show is not a series of self contained episodes, but each episode runs on after the other with references to past events. Therefore the characters develop beautifully with the programme as they absorb details of whatever happened to whichever kid this time. The three main leads are written from the off as having been best friends forever and a day and it shows here in the writing. No spoilers but the relationships of the kids are regularly tested throughout. One event in one episode in particular (I won't say which one) in any other mainstream show would have ended up in a major bust up that would typically last 90% of the episode. Here it was given something different - a beautiful heartfelt resolution that didn't take up anywhere near that amount of time.

This is not a bad little production, this is the sort of live action stuff Nickelodeon used to churn out in the 1990s, so its nice to see there is still a place for something like this. I must sum up with what creator David Anaxagoras wrote as a comment on his blog in 2016 that I agree with for this show: "I never thought of it as a kid's show. I wrote it for the kid in all of us".