The Adventure of the Over-Analysis

You can't really work in education and not get some exposure to children's TV. I'm always interested in it- for one thing I think it's really important to understand kids interests and using those interests has led me to teaching some of my best lessons. But beyond that, children's TV shows are strangely fascinating, especially when you start diving into their logic. 

Some kids TV shows intentionally reflect the real world. Balamory for example is basically a soap for young children with less murders than Eastenders and everyone wearing outfits which match the exterior of their house for some reason. Shows like Postman Pat and Fireman Sam reflect real world jobs. 

Pat's career appears to be going well and since my childhood he has been promoted from a neighbourhood postman to being in charge of special deliveries and has the use of a whole fleet of vehicles from a snowmobile to a helicopter. Every delivery seems to involve more drama than the average postal worker has in a lifetime yet Pat remains a really happy man. His black and white cat Jess is especially remarkable as not only does it appear to possess a remarkable intelligence for a feline it most have broken the world record for longest lived cat by now.

Fireman Sam has yet to receive a promotion and I suspect that's partly to do with his refusal to adopt the gender neutral term of "firefighter". Despite being the lead in a large number of fires and recuses, Sam has the remarkable achievement of never having had a single person die on his watch. This would imply that he's an excellent firefighter but surely a key part of the role is education and given how careless the residents of Ponty-Pridd are with everything from flames to ladders he's doing less well with that side of things. It's also incredible how many of the fire service's operations surround one Norman Price whose constant antics must surely make him singlehandedly a huge burden on tax payers.

Other shows like to reflect real life using animals. Peppa Pig is set in a world of anthropomorphic creatures with alliterative names- Peppa's school mates are the likes of Danny Dog and Suzy Sheep. Initially this all makes sense but when you start to delve deeper things get weird. Once they reach parenthood in this reality the animals no longer have the right to use their first name and are henceforth simply known as Daddy or Mummy Pig/Dog/Sheep until they have grandchildren and are promoted to Granny and Grandpa Pig/Dog/Sheep. I do wonder how animals in this world breed with each other given that the only other animals of the same species appear to be related to them- reading between the lines, there must be a lot of incest in Peppa Pig. 

Another oddity is Miss Rabbit. She's one of the few single characters in the show and it's no wonder she hasn't had time to find a partner given she appears to be the town's bus driver, barista, ice cream vendor, librarian, supermarket checkout clerk, firefighter, helicopter pilot, train driver, taxi driver, doctor and boat dealer amongst many others. Clearly the world of Peppa Pig is facing a drastic skills shortage. 

Whilst pigs, sheep, rabbits and many other animals walk on two legs, wear clothes and generally behave like humans, there are some animals that do not. Ducks are the same as in our world and quack around ponds for bread. Tortoise are similarly unevolved and seem to act more like dogs do in our world and are owned as pets by the intelligent animals. The event which caused the sudden acceleration of many species in this world has yet to be revealed so we don't yet know why occasional animals didn't progress in the same way.

Some kids TV shows appear to ignore reality altogether and feel like an extreme drug trip. In the Night Garden has characters ranging from the inch high pontypines up to the three-foot high Makka Pakka, some sort of troll who is obsessed with piles of stones, and the tombliboos, whose trousers constantly fall down and haven't yet invented the belt, to the haahoos, enormous inflatable pillow creatures. (Honestly, this is all in the show). One internet user has posited the theory that the entire show is simply Iggle Piggle's hallucinations as he fights dehydration and exposure on his little boat, as seen in the opening titles.

Perhaps slightly less insane but far better known is the Teletubbies. These brightly-coloured creatures have TVs built into their stomachs and have the ability to see children from our world on their screens, which raises some serious safe-guarding concerns. In recent years more episodes of the show have been made and these episodes introduced us to the "Tiddly Tubbies", a nursery of baby teletubbies rendered in CGI rather than using costumes. I've seen many a horror film which is less disturbing than these nightmarish visions. The very existence of the Tiddly Tubbies raises all sorts of questions that I wouldn't otherwise had considered and most of them are around teletubbies breeding. If babies exist in this world than there must be a way of creating them and logically that means teletubbies must have sex. I've done a bit of Googling to confirm a few details in this post but that's one thing I do not want in my search history. 

Children's TV is truly weird and wonderful- just don't look into it too closely!