Continuing my list of 7 children’s programmes.

Wimpole Village

Wimpole village

Now this really is one that few people remember. This was on at about 5am on a Saturday morning in the days when I still occasionally *saw* 5am on a Saturday morning.

Wimpole was, as you might imagine, pretty inoffensive, just following the lives of the villagers and some visitors to their village.

Each member of the village was named according to their job, for instance PC Crooknabber the policeman, Dennis Letterleaver the postman and Ted Dripping the butcher. Bit of a drought of female Wimpolians, come to think of it…

The Family Ness

The Family Ness

Ahhh, The Family Ness – this one had two great little theme tunes, one at the start and one at the end. So good, in fact, that I’m going to include them here (as soon as the audio plugin works in wordpress 2.7…)

The Family Ness was about Elspeth and Angus McToot who live next door to Loch Ness and befriend a host of Loch Ness Monsters when they prevent one of them from being seen by humans. In return they are given special Thistle Whistles which they can use to summon the Nessies if they’re ever in need of help.

The Nessies all have names befitting their physical characteristics or personal traits: Ferociousness, Loveliness, Sportiness and Her Royal High-ness

Most adventures revolve around either someone claiming to have seen the Nessies, someone making an attempt to capture the Nessies or just generally trying to prevent the Nessies from being seen.

Mr Benn

Mr Benn

Mr Benn – yet another children’s programme I own, bought for me as a Christmas present this time.

Mr Benn is in need of a fancy dress costume when he stumbles upon a small costume shop off the beaten track. It’s staffed by a magical shopkeeper who, as if by magic, appears whenever Mr Benn enters. Each episode is based around Mr Benn trying on a costume and having an adventure related to that costume – for example he might be a knight trying to prove the innocence of a friendly dragon who has been framed for burning down a village, or he might be a spaceman travelling through the stars.

At the end of every episode Mr Benn finds a souvenir in his pocket which is somehow related to his adventure. He’s a bit jammy really, given that he never actually buys or even rents anything!

Knightmare

Tregard the Dungeon Master and a dungeoneer

Knightmare was AWESOME for its time. It involved a group of four children, usually teenagers, navigating their way around a computer generated dungeon. One teen was the dungeoneer and wore a helmet to prevent looking anywhere but straight down, and the others guided him (or her) by following his progress on a viewscreen, usually inside a trunk or otherwise disguised slightly.

Progress could be aided by casting spells or eating food, or could be terminated by falling foul of one of the characters, falling into a chasm, not eating regularly enough or in some cases being sliced!

Knightmare ran on ITV (I believe it was made by Anglia) in the late 80s and early 90s and used to scare the crap out of me when a computerised skull used to rot and disintegrate on screen to show the dungeoneer was dying – at least until I got a little older and enjoyed the show.

By today’s standards the CGI looks VERY dated, but at the time it was interesting, thought provoking and entertaining.