Huge, massive apologies if you've e-mailed me in the last month or so and haven't had a reply - I've been either asleep or working. Seriously. It's become so bad it's affecting my health; I had another panic attack and I've started getting the same kind of stress-related numb patches on my head that Husband did after his eye problems began. The panic attack wasn't as bad as last time, perhaps because I knew I wasn't dying of a heart attack this time, so 'rode out the storm' in bed with bad work-related dreams.
However, having said that I've done nothing but work and sleep, I'm about to write a blog post about how much television I've watched lately due to the amazingly wonderful BBC iPlayer. Must've watched these shows when I was eating or something ;-)
The BBC iPlayer has introduced me to lots of programmes I'd never normally watch. I'm currently enjoying Summer Heights High, which fascinates more than it amuses (the three main characters are played by the same person).
Anyhow, I can't remember how come I ended up watching 'Easy Peasy Eco Beebies' a couple of weeks ago, but it was essentially a trailer for CBeebies latest environment/eco programme, 'The Green Balloon Club'.
The first proper episode (only available for a few more hours on the iPlayer) was last Friday and I was automatically hooked. In fact, I spent the whole week (panic attack aside) in eager anticipation of yesterday's episode and have heartily recommended it to my class.
It's presented by 'Sky' (Debbie Korley) from her green hot-air balloon, with her small gang of kids.
The children are particularly interesting; a range of ages (I'm guessing they range between five and ten years - but I'm useless at gauging TV kids' ages), skin colours and accents (well, there are some northerners in it at any rate). My favourite is Jay (Jake Pratt), the bird expert. He's got a certain sparkle about him - and he seems to get the most lines too. Then there's Cat, the animal expert (Thai Murray-Edwards) with her dog, Skipper; Ant (Adam Wells) - the insect/creepy-crawly expert and Lilly-Rose (Isabella Blake-Thomas) the youngest of the bunch, she's into flowers and plants.
There are a few regular sections; a musical moment (wildlife footage set to music - last week: The Carnival of the Animals, this week: Louis Armstrong's Wonderful World); a 'user submitted' segment (last week: a boy who films the wildlife in his huge garden on his own video camera, this week: sisters with nocturnal hedgehog visitors); spot of the week (something for the viewer to look out for in their own environment); a 'finding out' segment voiced-over by one of the children (best one so far: Jay's 'Is it a jay? No!') and the obligatory encouragement to visit the website (you'll need to have watched this week's show to know the 'password' - or... you could just guess), but Sky tempered this with a warning not to spend too long online because one of the aims of The Green Balloon Club is to get the viewer to spend more time outdoors.
Each show ends with a song. Now I'm not one for songs on TV shows, but The Green Balloon Club songs are upbeat and unbelievably catchy; the theme tune (bar the lyric, 'when we fly we're higher than the moon' which I hate for being factually incorrect), Let's Go Play Outside and All Earth's Creatures. Not quite sure why they sing some of it in American accents - and the pitch-shifting is rather obvious in places, but I suppose it's quite hard to find children who can act, present to camera, dance and sing.
My only reservation is that, so far, it's been rather middle-class. Will this alienate the audience that could potentially benefit the most from viewing; the average working class inner-city or suburban dweller?
Still, it's on every Friday for the next twelve months - it'll be interesting to see how it develops.
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