Play School (UK TV series)

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Play School was a long-running British series. It was produced by the BBC and ran from 21 April 1964 until 11 March 1988. It accidentally became the first ever programme to be shown on the fledgling BBC2 after a power cut halted the opening night programming. Play School originally appeared on weekdays at 11am on BBC2 and later acquired a mid-afternoon BBC1 repeat. It was superseded in October 1988 by Playbus.

Some 2 inch Quadruplex videotape master copies of Playschool episodes were irretrievably junked by Adam Lee of the BBC archives in 1993 on the assumption that they were 'no use' and that examples of some other episodes were sufficient. According to the 2006 NFT event Swiped Or Wiped, these included editions that had been used only a couple of years earlier in the making of the BBC Video release Play School Replay.

1 Presenters
2 Toys
3 Pets
4 Contents of the show
5 References
6 External links

[edit] Presenters

Presenters throughout the 24-year run included Brian Cant, Carol Chell, Sarah Long, Chloe Ashcroft, Derek Griffiths, Eric Thompson, Floella Benjamin, Don Spencer, Fred Harris, Lionel Morton, Miranda Connell, Carmen Munroe, Johnny Ball, Carol Leader, Simon Davies, Julie Stevens, Stuart McGugan, Toni Arthur, Johnny Silvo, Virginia Stride and Stuart Bradley.

In many cases five programmes would be produced in the space of two days, with one day of rehearsal and one day of recording.

[edit] Toys

The presenters were accompanied by a supporting cast of cuddly toys and dolls. The five regulars included:

Big Ted and Little Ted, teddy bears.
Humpty Dumpty, a soft toy version of the nursery rhyme egg, usually referred to as just 'Humpty'. A commonly held belief that he sported a monocle is incorrect.
Jemima, a ragdoll with long red and white striped legs.
Hamble, a rather dirty and ordinary plastic doll. It was one of the five original dolls, but was replaced by Poppy.
Poppy, a black doll who replaced Hamble in the later years of the series in response to changing attitudes in society (the Hamble doll was also getting rather fragile at this point.)

A rocking horse named Dapple was also seen in some episodes, when a particular song or item suggested it.

[edit] Pets

Katoo - a cockatoo
Bit and Bot - goldfish
A rabbit
Mice
Guinea pigs

The pets were cared for by Wendy Duggan.

[edit] Contents of the show

The high point of each episode was the video excursion into the outside world taken through one of three windows: the young viewers were invited to guess whether the round, square, or arched window would be chosen that day. A triangular window was added in 1983. Very often the film would be of a factory producing something such as chocolate biscuits, or of a domestic industry such as refuse collection.

Both the clock and the three window option lives on in the children's programme Tikkabilla, which borrows much from Play School, while a similar choice of portal into a film clip was provided by the abdomen-mounted video displays in the children's show "Teletubbies".

There would also be songs and stories.

From 1971 to 1984, Play School also had a sister programme, called Playaway.