Child Of The 1980’s

Before I go too far, I must first say that Red Dwarf has to be my favourite sitcom of all time, so I was pretty excited when I discovered there are plans to bring some new episodes to our screens on UK satellite channel Dave.  Two new episodes are planned, and also a “Making Of” show and a clips show with a difference.  For more details on this, check out the page on the Official Red Dwarf Fan Site.

With that out of the way, lets consider the original Red Dwarf series, which first aired in 1988 and lasted eight series, with the final series airing in 1999.  The series was created by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor (together known as Grant Naylor) who were also, rather dubiously, creators of The Chicken Song for Spitting Image.

Red Dwarf is the name of a giant 6 mile long space ship that belonged to the Jupiter Mining Corporation.  One fateful day a leak of Cadmium II radiation wiped out the entire ships crew, except for one, Dave Lister (Craig Charles), a lowly technician who only survived as he had been put into stasis (a kind of suspended animation) as a punishment for bringing a pet cat aboard.

Lister emerges from stasis to find 6 million years have passed, and that he is now surely the last human being alive.  The ships computer, Holly (Norman Lovett), had kept Dave safe waiting for the radiation to recede to safe levels, and has gone a little computer senile over the years.  To keep Dave sane, Holly brings his long dead bunk mate Arnold Rimmer (Chris Barrie) back to life as a computer generated hologram.  This is an odd choice given that Lister and Rimmer both hated each other.

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Henry’s Cat was a slightly overweight looking, bright yellow animated feline who, like many cats, was a bit on the lazy side most of the time.  His favourite hobbies were eating Jelly Baby sandwiches and day dreaming (often about eating Jelly Baby sandwiches).

His best friend was Chris Rabbit, a rather hyperactive blue bunny who had obviously had one too many glasses of orange squash.  Chris Rabbit would bound furiously around the screen filling Henry’s Cat’s head with barmy notions about doing strange activities, which the hapless cat usually ended up carrying out.

Whilst he had a great many other friends including Douglas Dog and Sammy Snail, he also had a number of enemies, foremost of which was the villainous Rum Baa Baa, who was unsurprisingly given the name a sheep.  Quite why Rum Baa Baa was so against our feline friend I really don’t know, but he was always hatching schemes to get the better of the yellow puss.  There was also the permanently bright pink faced Farmer Giles who had it in for Henry’s Cat, usually urging law keeper Constable Bulldog to arrest him.

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Following on from yesterdays post about Tooty Frooties, another favourite snack from the 1980’s which is still around today albeit in altered form is Monster Munch (though read on to find out about the planned re-release of the snack in its original form).  Personally I wasn’t that big a fan of them (I know, that’s tantamount to heresy to some people) but I did hold the sheer size of the things in awe and I loved the television adverts for them featuring the large muppet style monsters.

Monster Munch were first launched in 1977 by Smith’s crisps, and were instantly popular with kids because they were inexpensive yet you got a lot of snack for your money.  They were made from puffed corn, with each crisp being too large to fit in most kids mouths in a single bite.

The original line up of flavours was Pickled Onion, Roast Beef and “Saucy”, which was quite a strange set of varieties at the time, when Ready Salted, Cheese and Onion and Salt and Vinegar ruled the roost.  Each flavour of crisp was represented by a different monster on the packet, my favourite being the long necked pink monster with the massive tongue that reached into the packet to withdraw a crisp.  The shape was often referred to as being that of a monsters foot, but there were in fact two shapes, both representations of two of the monster clan - the pink monster with his long tongue, and the one eyed monster.

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Pigeon Street first aired in 1981 and was a jolly kids show following the lives of the residents of the aforementioned road.  It was initially shown on the BBC as one of its early afternoon shows for toddlers, each episode being around 10 minutes in length.

Pigeon Street itself was aptly named since there were always plenty of pigeons about watching what was going on or even getting involved in the stories themselves.

The show was animated using a very simple animation style which consisted of moving cut outs of the characters arms, legs, bodies and heads about to make them move.  This meant many of the characters leapt around in a gleeful manner, simply because their arms and legs didn’t bend.  This restriction meant that the various body parts were often coloured in a much more intricate way giving a more rounded, three dimensional look to the characters that most cartoons using flat colour rarely have.

Most of the characters had their own signature songs, some more memorable than others.  For this reason I still remember truck driver Long Distance Clara, with her country and western style tune, and Mr. Macadoo, the pet shop owner, as his song had some many “oo” rhymes it was unbelievable.  I’ve probably got it completely wrong but you had rhymes like “if you want a cockatoo, call on Mackadoo, he’s the man for you.”

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I recently rediscovered the World of Strange Powers series on TV channel The Paranormal Channel (one of the darker undiscovered corners of the Sky lineup I guess). At heart I’m a bit of a Fox Mulder, I want to believe, so to speak. I can’t say I definitely believe that aliens, ghosts and bigfoot exist, but I like to think that there’s a possibility they just might, and would love to see some evidence that proves they do. I think, for better or worse, it must have been this show that first sparked my interest in all things weird and spooky!

Anyway, on seeing the show on my TV planner I just had to watch it again, and it’s just as I remembered it. The spooky theme music and the image of the crystal skull in the middle of an eye used to chill me as a child, whilst curled up on the sofa watching intently, and it still sends a tingle down the spine even now. The weird distorted picture of Mr. Clarke sat on some rocks at the end of the titles also unnerved me as a child.

Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World first aired in 1980 on ITV, and was narrated by TV newsreader Anna Ford. The show consisted of Arthur, usually filmed walking along beaches in Sri Lanka, putting forward the idea that some weird or freaky thing could potentially exist. This series dealt with legendary creatures such as Bigfoot or giant squids, and with eye witness and expert accounts painted a picture of some of the strange animals that just might exist on this planet of ours. At the end Mr. Clarke would appear again to sum things up. I always got the impression that, just like I did, Arthur secretly hoped that these oddities could actually exist, even though there was no strong evidence to suggest they did.

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Wise cracking alien ALF hit our screens in 1986, and to this day is one of my favourite US sitcoms. It ran for four series and also spawned a film entitled Project ALF, and told the story of an alien who’s home planet Melmac had been destroyed and was now living on Earth, hiding out with an average American family called the Tanners.

ALF was of course a puppet, though an extremely well made and believable one. He was created by Tom Patchett and Paul Fusco, and indeed Fusco was also main puppeteer. Ocassionally, as on the title sequence, a full body shot was required which was achieved by having a dwarf actor in a suit.

The name ALF wasn’t actually the name of our alien chum, instead it was an abbreviation for Alien Life Form. Whilst the Tanners insisted on calling him ALF, his real name was actually the rather more ordinary sounding Gordon Shumway. After Melmac had been destroyed ALF found his way to Earth by tracking a radio signal. Willie Tanner (played by Max Wright) was the head of the Tanner clan, and he had a HAM radio setup which was what ALF had detected and followed to Earth.

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The Littlest Hobo is a well remembered show from the early 1980’s that follows the adventures of a stray german shepherd dog as it travels across America making friends with different humans with problems that the dog somehow manages to help them sort out. Once that weeks adoptive owner had been helped, off the dog went to find another needy human to help.

In the average episode it seemed that the human being helped would normally choose a name for the dog, which always seemed to be something like “lucky” or “champ”, usually chosen because the dog just happened to turn up at a time of need and would help the human achieve some goal they were struggling with. The real name of the dog actor (for want of a better phrase) that portrayed The Littlest Hob was actually London however.

Whilst there were obvious similarities to that other famous dog star Lassie, I always preferred The Littlest Hobo. Lassie always bored me, as it seemed to just be about some stupid kid getting into trouble every week and the dog coming to the rescue. I also always thought Lassie sounded really sad when she whined. The Littlest Hobo may have been similar in so far as the dog helped a human out of some scrape each week, but at least it was a different human each week, so the storylines seemed less repetitive than Lassie.

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Count Duckula first hit our screens as a villain in fellow Cosgrove Hall cartoon DangerMouse but in 1988 he was graced with his own TV show where he was the hero. Duckula is the latest in a long line of vampire ducks, who in keeping with traditional vampire law can only be killed by exposure to sunlight or a stake through the heart. However, he can be resurrected once every century by the means of an ancient rite when the moon is alligned in a particular position.

Unfortunately, the resurrection didn’t go according to plan this time round. The Duckula clan had always been blood thirsty vampires, but a mistake with the ingredients for the magic resurrection spell (tomato ketchup being used in place of blood) resulted in the reincarnated Count Duckula becoming a vegetarian. He also lost all his other evil desires which instead were replace by a desire to become an entertainer!

Duckula has two servants who cater for his every whim. Butler Igor is an aged old vulture who yearns for a return to “the good old days” of previous Counts, with all the maiming and torture that would entail. He has served the Duckula family for many generations, which given that the resurrection spell can only be done once a century makes him very old indeed. Nanny is a giant, dim witted chicken who is both Duckula’s housekeeper and nanny. Her arm is always in a sling for some reason, and she has a habit of walking straight through walls rather than using doorways. She isn’t at all evil-minded though, unlike Igor, and insists on calling Duckula her “Ducky-poos”.

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