Thursday, 19th July 2007.

Line Management

Having children is a wonderful thing because it lets you take certain liberties. Before you all start throwing stuff, I fully appreciate the joys of fatherhood and the delight from watching my children grow up. My priorities are firmly fixed in a deep appreciation of Joshua and Thomas and how they've enriched my life. That said, it's great that you also get parking privileges, the excuse to talk about the most disgusting topics (vomit, colour of excrement, nose-picking etc.) with other parents, and even bottling out of potentially awkward social occasions on the grounds that "it'll be Joshua's bedtime".

By far the best perk, however, is the fact that I get to watch children's TV without feeling guilty. To be honest, I've never stopped watching children's TV. You grow out of the programmes of your early childhood, but Camberwick Green and Bagpuss are replaced by Knightmare or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Then you get to a certain age (i.e. college) where the inane babble of the Teletubbies actually provides a decent respite from (or substitute for) work. Then you get to your early twenties, where the retro thing kicks in, and by then it's too late. You're trapped in a never-ending spiral of getting up on a Saturday morning and trying to unmask the Scooby Doo criminal of the week before Fred and Daphne have finished their secret tryst in the hidden passage behind the old museum.

When Emily and I first moved in together - even before she got pregnant - we found we were watching a lot of CBeebies. I knew all the characters and songs from Balamory way in advance of June 2005, and frightened some of our ante-natal group in the process. But now I get to watch it with Josh and share the experience with him - you can't get a genuine appreciation of just how good Teletubbies actually is until you watch it with a toddler, and while I can use parenthood as an excuse for guiltless viewing of children's TV, it's also true that the watch-with-parent interaction that we've tried to establish has made viewing all the more pleasurable.

Thomas will watch anything we put him in front of, if he's in the right mood. Josh has certain favourites that fluctuate, like childhood best friends who fall out and back in and back out again. He was very fond of In The Night Garden when it was first released, but the last few times it's been on he's lost interest. His enthusiasm for Teletubbies has fluctuated over the last year or so (it's currently on an up-swing) but it's more fun watching him gradually become interested in programmes that we used to like: he's currently fascinated with Scooby Doo and Bagpuss, and he watches Rainbow with a strange, mesmerised expression on his face - one that usually breaks into a smile when he eventually points at George with the word "Hippo!", as if he's just figured it out.

Just recently we seem to have got him hooked on Thomas the Tank Engine. I think it's trains in general: the boys have inherited my Brio train set and both sets of grandparents have given him expansions and tunnels and new engines. Josh and I managed to slip unnoticed into Didcot Railway Centre late one Saturday afternoon when they'd stopped selling tickets, and spent a pleasurable hour or so looking at the trains. He's even had the chance to ride on a few. The adventures of the fictional tank engine and his dysfunctional friends seemed the next logical step, but it's somewhat disconcerting watching the show again after all these years, and realising that - at the risk of using a cliche of gargantuan proportions - it's just Not As Good As It Used To Be.

One of the biggest problems with the later series of Thomas & Friends is Michael Angelis' narration, which is substandard to say the least. Those of us who grew up with Ringo are bound to feel jaded. He wasn't the most talented Beatle but he did at least manage to narrate the early Thomas adventures with enthusiasm. People forget that he only actually did two series' worth, and complaining that it was never as good after he left is a little like complaining that the real Pink Floyd died when Syd Barrett was chucked out. The issue with Angelis' narration, however, isn't so much his storytelling ability but rather the character voices. Percy is irritatingly high-pitched and sounds like he ought to be in a remedial English class somewhere, while James has become a dole queue Scouse (as he's my namesake I take particular offence to this). Worst of all is the Fat Controller, who now sounds like the bastard lovechild of Winston Churchill and John Prescott. You could argue that the Island of Sodor's geographical proximity to the Isle of Man renders these accents a little more authentic than Ringo's Liverpudlian drone, but that doesn't make them any less irritating.

The concept of TV programmes losing their magic is, of course, as old as the hills. Postman Pat is perhaps the worst perpetrator: currently enjoying something of a revival thanks to the new adventures broadcast on CBeebies, Pat's all over the toy shops, but the simple truth is that Pat's adventures have taken a nosedive in the quality control department. Part of it is that the new storylines have become overly complicated, due to the introduction of a gaggle of schoolchildren. Pat's son Julian now plays a substantial role (leading some to incorrectly remark that "Postman Pat is now married with a son" - this has always been the case; you just didn't see much of them). The schoolchildren spend each episode getting into one scrape or another, but the introduction of subplots doesn't help the flow - it's not always clear (to a toddler, anyway) which is supposed to be the main narrative, and while attempts are made to bring the stories together the endings often feel a little forced.

What's more, the new Pat has taken the obligatory plunge into political correctness, as various characters disappear entirely, only to be replaced by vacuous ethnic minority representatives who are there for no reason other than to create a melting pot - in rural Lancashire. Gone are Peter Fogg and his sheep, the stately Miss Hubbard and her bicycle (last seen eloping with Peter Fogg - the bike, that is) and Sam Waldron and his mobile shop. Presumably everyone now orders their groceries on the internet. We now have Amy the African vet, Dr Gilbertson the Welsh GP (whose daughter, Sarah, is arguably the most annoying children's TV character since the first recorded appearance of Zippy) and Geordie schoolteacher Jeff Pringle.

Also adjusting to village life are Ajay Bains and his family: Ajay runs the Greendale light railway, while his wife Nisha works in the station's tea room with Pat's wife Sara. The Bains are practicing Hindus, a fact not-so-subtly alluded to in one particular episode where Jeff Pringle is explaining the significance of local festivals - "Christmas..Easter..Diwali.." Admittedly, the impact of this reference was somewhat overshadowed by the fact that I'd just noticed that nearly all the school children had ginger hair, which makes you wonder if Postman Pat has been delivering more than the mail. It doesn't help that the show's new theme music has a central refrain that goes "Postman, Postman Pat / Can you guess what's in his bag?".

At least the Greendale trains run on time, which is more than you can say for the ones on the Island of Sodor. Watching the newer series of Thomas the Tank Engine, I'm struck by an interesting thought: Sodor's railway service is *appalling*. It's unreliable and full of whiny self-important engines with tremendous egos. They're always breaking down and having accidents. There were always problems with the railway, and the odd accident, but unless I'm remembering it wrong I'm sure that in the original railway books the line ran fairly smoothly, largely because of Sir Topham Hatt's authoritarian stance. "Engines on *my* railway," he sternly explained to James, Gordon and Henry (who were on strike), "do as they are told". This was broadcast on ITV in the days when the spirit of the miner's unions was slowly being crushed: even though Awdry had written it forty years previously, the Thatcherite overtones - and, indeed, the Conservative nature of the programme in general - were pretty transparent. There's a reason that only one of the engines is painted red.

These days, however, there's less industrial action and more calamity on the line. Part of this, I'm sure, is finance-related. The development of new technology, coupled with the fact that the budget has obviously gone up means that the technical team can do shedloads (engine shedloads?) of new stunts that they didn't dare attempt in the earlier series. In 1984 the best you'd get was Gordon lifting very slightly off the rails and into an inch-deep pool of water that was supposed to be a ditch. These days you get engines that go flying off cliffs and into pools of lava (all right, coloured treacle), followed by trucks that explode. They have rock falls and grounded helicopters and goodness knows what else.

But consider this:

Harvey to the Rescue
Some trucks drag Percy down and hill and cause a derailment at Bulgy's Bridge which blocks the road.

No Sleep for Cranky
Cranky the crane gets so annoyed with Bill & Ben's constant chatter that he accidentally knocks over a shed, blocking the line.

A Bad Day for Harold the Helicopter
Harold has a chance to prove himself when a broken signal means Percy cannot get through with the mail, and whilst the workmen hastily try to repair it, the mail bags are loaded into Harold's harness. He is feeling so clever that he decides to take them all at once, but the weight is far too much for him to handle. The mailbags get stuck in a tree and Harold finds himself diving nose-first into a haystack.

The Fogman
A landslide crushes the foghorn, so there is no way to warn the engines of the fallen rocks hidden in the fog. Thomas unfortunately hits the rocks and soon Cyril the fogman arrives to help warn engines he has been derailed.

Jack Jumps In
Jack the front loader ignores the warnings of the other quarry engines, and as a result, he tips over on the road and slides down the hill on his side in a pile of sand.

The World's Strongest Engine
Diesel pulls so hard on a truck that the coupling breaks, sending him through a pair of buffers and landing on a barge.

Gordon Takes a Tumble
An impatient Gordon is pulling trucks when he is accidentally diverted onto an old branch line the next morning, and lands himself in trouble when the rails can't take his weight.

Percy's Chocolate Crunch
Percy is pushed under a coal chute (right as the operator starts pouring the coal), and gusts of wind from Harold the Helicopter's rotor sends piles of ashes flying...right onto Percy! To help cope with the frustration, Percy takes some sugar vans that must be delivered to the Mr. Jolly's chocolate factory. He approaches the factory on the sloped tracks that go up to the loading and delivery dock, which are coated with oil from a leaky truck. Percy applies his brakes, but the oil makes him skid past the dock and right into the factory wall. There are a series of gloops and splats from the heart of the factory, and Percy pops out the other end, covered in chocolate.

This is from one season, and these are only the accidents: we've also got trucks who cause bedlam, lost and broken whistles, damaged buffers and engines who'd rather sightsee, race buses or search for treasure than deliver the mail (or their passengers). The overall impression you get is one of total chaos, with a dictatorial (if occasionally kind-hearted) bureaucrat who is only just managing to hold the network together. Accidents are never investigated; instead random blame is allocated to whoever is by default the naughtiest engine, leaving hurt passengers and damaged goods and no satisfied customers. The parallels with Railtrack are obvious.

Here's another thing: said crashes / derailments / industrial action are never the fault of the drivers. You can sort of understand the drivers wanting to jump clear when a train is about to crash - it's the sensible thing to do. But having a sentient engine doesn't mean that drivers are without blame. We saw the consequences of going off without your driver in Thomas Comes To Breakfast (which I found in a charity shop recently, and which Josh greatly enjoys). I'm therefore at a loss as to why, on all the other occasions when engines shunt trucks violently, the drivers are blameless. If I crashed my car, I couldn't exactly stand there looking at the mangled wreckage by the crushed lamp post and say "Poppy, you have caused CONFUSION and DELAY!". They'd think I was mad. On the other hand, if one of the Sodor trains runs on time it's always the engine that's praised and never the driver, so it's swings and roundabouts. The drivers tend to just sit in the cab, unnoticed and unloved - a forgotten statistic, like Corey Feldman.

Springer's final thought for today goes to my brother, who is never at a loss for an opinion. He had this to offer:

"You make a very valid point about the railway, they have more problems than most lines. If you were stood on the platform at Reading station at 7.30 in the morning and some fat guy came over and said the train was delayed because it have some grief with some troublesome trucks a bit further up the line, quite frankly you wouldn't buy it. There would be uproar. However, if the line ran smoothly and the engines weren't self important, there wouldn't be much story. If Gordon took the express on time every week I probably wouldn't bother watching."

It's his use of the present tense that bothers me. I have a two-year-old son. I have excuses....