Qualms & Wires

Ooh I know Charlie. I am a very lovely recorderer player.

I don't know if I personally would want my own offspring exposed to a showcasing of deliberate bad grammar and the general language freestyling/massacre that Lola Sunna, one half of the Cbeebies' double act "Charlie & Lola" programme, constantly engages in. But then, I don't buy Charlie and Lola DVDs with a view to keeping any potential future sprogs entertained. I buy them for me because quite frankly, Charlie & Lola is toddler-viewing for adults, and should be on at 8 or 9 pm at night, rather than 3 in the afternoon, if you ask me. I have a lot of time for children's television, if a good one comes along, which happens less and less frequently. I think it was a kind of morbid fascination which had me entranced by each episode of teletubbies, many years ago now, and Angelmouse I appreciated essentially for the screaming hilarity value, Spider for its musical compositions genius. I find some of the stuff the BBC imports these days to be nothing short of profoundly alarming, the kind of moralising, patronising nonsense generally out of America or Iceland - in the case of the extremely sinister Lazytown.

Paradoxically, I think the core appeal of Charlie & Lola lies in something that can only really be appreciated by those who've outgrown it. Because what the programme conveys so well is the way its heroine exists within her own control-sphere, which operates according to her own defined world order, and revolves entirely around her. Nobody corrects her, they humour her. Not only does she get away with butchering the english language, she's full of dogmatic pronouncements, assertions of absolute nonsense. Habits that a severe reality check and perhaps also a good shake will no doubt go a long way to curing.

"Charlie & Lola" celebrates that miraculous aspect of childhood that thinks it is, and by the same token simply is, infallible.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/charlieandlola/