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Animal Kwackers [09/10/75]

9 Oct 1975
12m

Do you believe in rock and roll? Bongo, Rory, Boots and Twang help spread the good word in this colourful cult kids' series.

Animal Kwackers was clearly produced at a fraction of the cost of the American animal band series The Banana Splits (1968-70), and never reached the top of the charts like Damon Albarn's Gorillaz. But in its own way, this Yorkshire Television produced pre-school series was a veritable success. A screening slot of midday Thursdays is a long way from prime time, but their popularity resulted in three series, a double album and a tie-in storybook.

A changing cast of musicians and actors donned the costumes of Bongo the dog, Boots the tiger, Twang the monkey and Rory the lion over the years, but a mix of cover versions and original music held the show together. Trev Hodgson's wonderfully lo-fi magic marker animation opens and closes the programme and suggests an extra-terrestrial origin for the fab four. Animal Kwackers toured around Britain as a children's stage show into the late 1980s, though presumably in a more down-to-earth fashion.

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Kid's TV

Our relationship with the small screen starts early in life, opening our square eyes to a heady mix of drama and comedy; fantasy and fact.

Dedicated children’s programming has been part of the television mix from its earliest years, growing from short intervals “For The Children” after WWII, to a plethora of standalone channels today. The start of the BBC’s long-running “Watch With Mother” series in 1953 set much of the template for pre-school television, blending puppets, song and animation, with the implicit expectation that mum - assumed to be a housewife - would supervise. Catering for older children, meanwhile, sought to balance the kinds of programmes children want to watch with those their parents want them to see. Eventually a fuller menu of drama, comedy, factual and magazine programmes for children - in other words, versions of 'grown-up' programmes for 'small people' - came to fill the schedules of weekday afternoons and Saturday mornings. Sadly, the segregation of children’s television to its own satellite, cable and digital channels has made its much less likely for adults to experience the frequent delights of kids’ TV. But our collection welcomes all ages! (Though please note that some programmes maybe flagged as unsuitable for young children.)

47 videos in this collection

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1971

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1972

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