The Golden Age of Children’s TV by Tim Worthington

As a regular reader of Tim Worthington’s blog It’s Good Except it Sucks I had his latest book on my Christmas list as soon as it was released. Luckily enough someone bought it for me, so it was with a sense of anticipation that I settled down to read it on my daily commute.

For those who are not acquainted with Tim’s online presence, he is the foremost expert on Children’s TV of the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s with an encyclopaedic knowledge of the familiar, the obscure and the shows that literally no one else seems to have heard of. Combining a scholar’s research with a crowd pleasing writing style that draws you in straight away, he is by turns, enthusiastic, witty, irreverent and opinionated, but never dismissive. He has his own viewpoint on these shows, but he wears these opinions with a sureness and lightness of touch that makes even shows you have never heard of or didn’t like fascinating. These qualities that light up his online writing are even more in evidence in this excellent book. The book is thematic rather than chronological and individual chapters cover genres such as Saturday morning television, Comedy and Imports alongside specific studios such as Gerry and Sylvia Anderson’s Century 21 and Peter Firmin and Oliver Postgate’s Smallfilms.

If we look at Saturday morning television, I get the impression, perhaps wrongly, that he was a TISWAS fan, whereas I was 100% in the Multi Coloured Swap Shop corner and would not watch its competitor for love nor money. Despite this, I found his explanation of the genesis of TISWAS absolutely fascinating and it gave me a new appreciation of the ground breaking nature of the show. I still wouldn’t watch it, but there you go! What I didn’t realise was the sheer number of Saturday morning shows that were tried over the years. From The Saturday Show, apparently starring my teen crush Isla St Clair, to Number 73 with Sandi Toksvig, and The Saturday Banana with Bill Oddie the search for long term successors to Swap Shop and TISWAS made unlikely use of a number of famous faces. The policy of wiping videotapes has probably consigned every episode of a number of these shows to oblivion, but, thanks to Worthington, they now stand more of a chance of staying in the folk memory of fans of popular culture.

The output of the Andersons was far more extensive than I had realised with pretty much everything before and after Stingray, Thunderbirds, Joe 90 and Captain Scarlet being a closed book to me. Even those shows I thought I was so familiar with were given new life by the facts and anecdotes that were unearthed by this book. Smallfilms in many ways defined a huge part of my primary school childhood, but once again I found new details and insights to fascinate and delight.

With the whole gamut of Children’s programming coming under his gaze, Worthington mentions hundreds upon hundreds of shows. Some of the more obscure ones, for example Pardon My Genie, were accompanied by a thrill of recognition despite not having thought of them in 50 years. Others didn’t even raise a glimmer of recognition. Sorry, Tim, I’m still not sure you didn’t dream Rubovia! When time allows I will flick through the book and type multiple titles into YouTube in the hope that I will be able to acquaint or reacquaint myself with some of the shows that have piqued my interest. It is a treasure trove of gems, both real and fake, but we are lucky to be guided by a jeweller who can polish them up to make them shine like new, or to regretfully explain why they are flawed.

If you remember the Golden Age of Children’s TV, and as Worthington makes clear it really was golden, this book is for you. If you don’t but would like to find out about it, this book is for you. If you are interested in culture in its widest sense and feel that TV shows of the past should not be consigned to oblivion this book is for you. If you were ever a child, this book is for you. Zebedee might say it’s time for bed, but you have a torch so you can read this book under the covers. Just remember to switch it off if your bedroom door creaks!