The Woodentops - Theme Tune & Opening Sequence - BBCTV 1955-73 - Watch with Mother
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- Опубліковано 13 вер 2024
- The Woodentops - one of the most fondly-remembered programmes from the classic BBC Television pre-schoolers 'Watch With Mother' lunchtime slot.
Conceived by the legendary children's TV and radio producer Freda Lingstrom together with Maria Bird, The Woodentops were a wooden puppet family who lived on the farm. No, the name Woodentops was not intended as an insult!
The storylines helped children to understand traditional family units, the way that life in the home and on the farm worked, and it offered reassuringly well-defined gender roles - ones that would make any Islington Labour activist choke on their foie gras canapés.
Delightful in its simplicity and charm this show will be remembered with great affection by nearly everyone who was a child in the fifties and sixties.
Maria Bird provided the scripts and the narration as well as the voice of Mummy Woodentop in her perfect RP English. Remember Mummy Woodentop gently humming as she looked after baby? Daddy Woodentop's accent was a little more rustic, but then he was a farmer. So no stereotyping there then!
26 episodes were produced by the BBC Film Unit at Lime Grove Studios in West London in 1955 and if I remember rightly, The Woodentops generally occupied the Friday lunchtime Watch With Mother slot during the mid 60s, and was joined on other days of the week with other treasures such as Bill and Ben, Pogles Wood, Tales of the Riverbank, Camberwick Green and of course Andy Pandy.
The theme music is Kulokk by Grieg - proving that children's television could be quite high brow.
Sadly the widespread ownership of colour television sets spelt the end for The Woodentops. Like most other well-loved black and white children's shows it was gently retired in the early seventies. Perhaps someone should colourise it!
The cast comprised:
Daddy Woodentop
Sam Scrubbitt (the farmhand)
Mummy Woodentop
Mrs Scrubbit (the home help)
Jenny & Willy Woodentop (the twins)
Baby Woodentop
Spotty Dog (the very biggest spotty dog you ever did see)
Oh, and there was Buttercup the cow.
The theme is very relaxing
... and the spotiest dog you ever did see!
My brother and I loved imitating Spotty Dog with his wonderfully exaggerated limb movements!
@@LostsTVandRadio
Yes those ears. 🤣
@@LostsTVandRadio
I'm still talking about Spotty Dog.
😅
To this very day I still call Dalmatians Spotty Dogs.
Ahhh yes!!!
Ditto
Friday afternoons.
Happy days. 😁 👍
Oh better days
I wonder if they still live there?
Depends upon the prevalence of woodworm.
😅
It's cliché but times were so much simpler and more wholesome back then, especially for children.
Oh and doesn't the narrator sound just like Annette Crosbie!
So true!!
This is when a none woke BBC Produced something I actually wanted to watch back in the 1960s as a kid 👍🏻
but what about in 2023 🤔 well today this same programe would get a woke warning saying this may offend some viewers with men showing too much wood !! 😂
Also with all the characters being made of wood it's too non-inclusive to be broadcast today.