Tuesday 28 October 2014

2. Watch With Mother : Tales From The Riverbank



First  watched : Uncertain

Moving  onto  Monday  7  October  1968  and  the  Watch  With  Mother  slot   at  13.30  which  was  occupied  by  Tales  Of  The  Riverbank. 

I  have  no  separate  memory  of  the  show  in  its  BBC  days. The  show , loosely  based  on  The  Wind  In  The  Willows , was  originally  bought  from  Canada  in  1960  with  Johnny  Morris   replacing  the  Canadian  narrators. It  ran  for  13  episodes  and  proved  so  popular  the  BBC commissioned  another  39  which  were  filmed  on  the  Isle  of  Wight  between  1961  and  1962. The  sustained  popularity  of  the  show  led  to  its  revival  in  1972-3  although  because  the  BBC  suits  had  taken  a  dislike  to  anthropomorphism   i.e  matching  voices  to  live  animals  it  went  over  to  a  grateful  ITV  and  was  renamed  Hammy  Hamster .

By  that  time  I'm  afraid  I  found  it  silly  and  boring. We  didn't  have  a  hamster  until  1979  so there  was  nothing  for  me  to  engage  with, watching  a  few  tame  rodents  clambering  over  toys. It  can't  have  been  an  easy  job  for  the  cameramen, waiting  around  on  the  alert  for  the animals doing  what  they  were  supposed  to  for  a  few  seconds  and  capturing  it  in  a  usable  form. Apparently  all  the  animals  were  released  into  the  wild  at  the  end  of  the  series  and  unsurprisingly  perished  fairly  quickly.

Its  brief  revival  in  the  90s  on  Channel 5  and  CGI  film  version  which  went  straight to  DVD in  2008  passed  me  by  entirely.

I  know  many  regard  it  very  fondly  but  it's  a  no  from  me.

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