Biffovision

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Biffovision was BBC's 'grown up take' on low-budget children's TV from the 1980s. It included satirical sketches on children's television, fictional music videos, and 'educational' segments. It was written by Paul Rose and Tim Moore. A 30 minute pilot aired on March 26, 2007 on BBC Three, and was repeated at midnight on June 5, 2007.

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 was suggested in the opening song that this physical anomaly 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 involved two children from the audience being shown the far future by a character known as 'Santa Claus' who was in fact a man wearing Victorian clothing who had drawn a beard on his face. In the future, the children saw their own deaths, met 'a robot with a metal chuff' and interacted with a futuristic joke-telling machine.
  • Mr. Safety - a puppet character, Mr. Safety presented the 'Biffo Tips' segment which aimed to educate children about the importance of safety. In the pilot, Mr. Safety took the opportunity to lambast a 'fat idiot' who had moistened her legs whilst 'goofing off in a weir' and had attempted to 'dry them - with flames'. He then sang a song intended to help BW and the children remember his advice but which appeared to be concerned instead with a vicious physical assault.

A full series was not commissioned by the BBC.

[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