#6 The Kids are Alright
09/04/20 14:25
During this lockdown, we’ve taken the opportunity to really get to grips with our children’s education, implementing a rigorous learning schedule that includes marching in the yard, mastering quadratic equations and dipping into conversational French. I want to the kids to return to school with a rich hinterland, you know? So I’ve drilled them in Impressionist art, Tudor piracy, and cryptids (using the Gruffalo as an example). I love home schooling and am a great teacher – if only my kids would listen. But they’re too busy letting a yellow ladybird march over their naked bodies, mixing soil in the sandpit and traipsing it through the kitchen, farting in each other’s faces, and turning the whole house into a Hot Wheels race track. My earnest skimming-stone schooling falls on deaf and muddy ears.
One thing we have managed to get a grip on, though, is their TV-watching. My boys have terrible taste in television – the eldest loves watching YouTube videos of people playing Mario Kart, while the youngest insists on endless clips of a spoilt American called Ryan playing with new toys. This really upsets me, and I’m always trying to interest them in episodes of Blue Planet, which they’ll watch, dead-eyed, for thirty seconds, before turning to me and saying ‘Ninja Kids please.’ I was at my wits’ end, but then the other day my husband put his foot down, and switched to CBBC. Malory Towers was on, and everything changed for 24 minutes.
For some reason they were entranced, and I was allowed, briefly, to revisit my childhood, when I used to beg my parents to let me go to boarding school because then I could be like Darrell, diving in ocean pools, having midnight feasts and delving into trunks full of kit. I loved Malory Towers so much I wrote a mediocre spin-off about Darrell’s sister Felicity, so I approached this adaptation with trepidation, thinking it probably wouldn’t live up to my ideal. But it did.
We begin with Darrell’s parents proudly waving their little girl onto the train, off to live on the other side of the country with a bunch of strangers who all have reassuring received pronunciation. Early jeopardy includes our heroine determinedly rescuing her straw boater from a hanging basket on the platform, thereby earning the reputation as a ‘tomboy’. Gwendoline’s there, brushing her hair and being a total bitch, and if Alicia’s sharp tongue isn’t immediately apparent, she at least has an obsession with ghosts that marks her out as leftfield.
The student body has a pleasingly anachronistic diversity – I’m sure Enid Blyton never imagined anything but a Cornish sea of white faces – but everything else is just as it was in the books. They play lacrosse and have tuck boxes, Miss Grayling looks exactly right, and the coastal swimming pool is a joy (though must have been a bugger to film). In short, it’s everything you need in these testing times – an escape to a world where all that’s required is to jolly well buck up, old chap. One might dismiss it as outdated and unworldly – but that’s what Malory Towers is, and to tinker too much would make it Trebizon (another school series I heartily recommend). Anyway, my Adidas-wearing, ninja-moving, fully-feral boys loved it, and shivered at the spooky ending, so we’ll definitely be sticking with it.
I’m a big fan of kids’ TV, and future Square Eyes blogs will no doubt wax lyrical about why Teen Titans Go is the greatest comedy series on screen, but for now, I’ll leave you with a magical moment that made me think we’re doing OK. The other day, my eldest asked if he could watch TV, and I eyed him suspiciously, assuming he wanted to gawp at a YouTube video of 20-something dudes making rockets out of Mentos and cola bottles. ‘What do you want to watch?’ I asked. ‘The Simpsons,’ he replied. ‘It’s really funny.’
My work here is done.
One thing we have managed to get a grip on, though, is their TV-watching. My boys have terrible taste in television – the eldest loves watching YouTube videos of people playing Mario Kart, while the youngest insists on endless clips of a spoilt American called Ryan playing with new toys. This really upsets me, and I’m always trying to interest them in episodes of Blue Planet, which they’ll watch, dead-eyed, for thirty seconds, before turning to me and saying ‘Ninja Kids please.’ I was at my wits’ end, but then the other day my husband put his foot down, and switched to CBBC. Malory Towers was on, and everything changed for 24 minutes.
For some reason they were entranced, and I was allowed, briefly, to revisit my childhood, when I used to beg my parents to let me go to boarding school because then I could be like Darrell, diving in ocean pools, having midnight feasts and delving into trunks full of kit. I loved Malory Towers so much I wrote a mediocre spin-off about Darrell’s sister Felicity, so I approached this adaptation with trepidation, thinking it probably wouldn’t live up to my ideal. But it did.
We begin with Darrell’s parents proudly waving their little girl onto the train, off to live on the other side of the country with a bunch of strangers who all have reassuring received pronunciation. Early jeopardy includes our heroine determinedly rescuing her straw boater from a hanging basket on the platform, thereby earning the reputation as a ‘tomboy’. Gwendoline’s there, brushing her hair and being a total bitch, and if Alicia’s sharp tongue isn’t immediately apparent, she at least has an obsession with ghosts that marks her out as leftfield.
The student body has a pleasingly anachronistic diversity – I’m sure Enid Blyton never imagined anything but a Cornish sea of white faces – but everything else is just as it was in the books. They play lacrosse and have tuck boxes, Miss Grayling looks exactly right, and the coastal swimming pool is a joy (though must have been a bugger to film). In short, it’s everything you need in these testing times – an escape to a world where all that’s required is to jolly well buck up, old chap. One might dismiss it as outdated and unworldly – but that’s what Malory Towers is, and to tinker too much would make it Trebizon (another school series I heartily recommend). Anyway, my Adidas-wearing, ninja-moving, fully-feral boys loved it, and shivered at the spooky ending, so we’ll definitely be sticking with it.
I’m a big fan of kids’ TV, and future Square Eyes blogs will no doubt wax lyrical about why Teen Titans Go is the greatest comedy series on screen, but for now, I’ll leave you with a magical moment that made me think we’re doing OK. The other day, my eldest asked if he could watch TV, and I eyed him suspiciously, assuming he wanted to gawp at a YouTube video of 20-something dudes making rockets out of Mentos and cola bottles. ‘What do you want to watch?’ I asked. ‘The Simpsons,’ he replied. ‘It’s really funny.’
My work here is done.
- Malory Towers, CBBC, 13 episodes
- Teen Titans Go, Netflix and Amazon Prime
- The Simpsons – streaming on Disney+
