Biffovision

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Biffovision is BBC's 'grown up take' on low-budget children's TV from the 1980s. It includes satirical sketches on children's television, fictional music videos, and 'educational' segments. It is written by Paul Rose and Tim Moore. A 30 minute pilot aired on March 26, 2007 on BBC3. Segments shown in this included:

  • Scranton-K - a short cartoon segment featuring a fully grown naked man who has a boot for a head. It is suggested in the opening song that this physical anomoly is divine retribution for 'real bad stuff' Scranton-K was responsible for in a former life. In the cartoon, Scranton-K and his friends drive around in a van hunting ghosts in a clear parody of Scooby-Doo, a cartoon which was a regular fixture on the British Saturday morning children's shows which Biffovision is intended to resemble.
  • Kids In The Future - a sketch which involves two children from the audience being shown the far future by a character known as 'Santa Claus' who is in fact a man wearing Victorian clothing who has drawn a beard on his face. In the future, the children see their own deaths, meet 'a robot with a metal chuff' and interact with a futuristic joke-telling machine.
  • Mr. Safety - a puppet character, Mr. Safety presents the 'Biffo Tips' segment which aims to educate children about the importance of safety. In the pilot, Mr. Safety takes the opportunity to lambast a 'fat idiot' who has moistened her legs whilst 'goofing off in a weir' and is attempting to 'dry them - with flames'. He then sings a song intended to help BW and the children remember his advice but which appears to be concerned instead with a vicious physical assault.

It is not known which if any of the sketches shown in the pilot will reappear should a full series be comissioned by the BBC.

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[edit] Recurring images and motifs

  • The phrase 'Now this happens' is spoken by several characters.
  • The repeated use of the words 'bosoms' and 'buttocks'.
  • There are numerous instances of the words 'Vote Conservative' appearing in unexpected places (scrawled on the pages of a children's book, picked out in neon on the side of a building in the future). One wheelchair-bound character also has a banner reading 'Vote Republican'.
  • Many characters (both real and animated) sport beards held on by string, although both the beards and the string are drawn on in pen.

[edit] Characters

[edit] Trivia

Biffovision is also the name of the computer games column featured in Edge magazine, again written by Paul Rose.

[edit] External links

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