In the Night Garden....

It’s no use. I have tried and tried but I can’t hold back on this one any longer. Since its launch three years ago, I have been busting to write a piece about In the Night Garden, the Andrew Davenport created children’s TV series. But a certain sense has always held me back, the sense that a fully-grown and matured adult should not be watching and enjoying a programme aimed at 0-3 year olds. However, I recently reviewed the ‘matured’ bit and decided that maybe I was qualified to comment, after all. In the Night Garden was first aired on BBC in 2007. Since then it has conquered 35 countries, including Norway and China, where book sales have reached 1.5 million. It is now a travelling stage show. So, what is all the fuss about?
The characters; Iggle Piggle, Makka Pakka, Upsy Daisy and many others, are designed as soft toys, the kind that any child might own. They inhabit a colourful, yet gentle world that is brightly lit at the beginning of each 30-minute episode, and slowly turns to shade as the story unfolds. At the end, the toys all go to bed in the same ritualistic way as childern do. Last to go is always Iggle Piggle who skips through the night garden swinging his red blanket, then is seen in a boat on a dark sea, floating away to a world of dreams.
Each episode is a complete story in itself, an essay into sound and colour, told by the action of the toys and narration by the honeyed tones of Derek Jacobi. The narrative also plays with the names of the toys, each name being definite but based on ‘baby babble’, again, the way a child names his toys. The toys themselves don’t use speech, but each has a unique ‘signature’ sound, a burble or squeak. Each toy also has its own character and behaves predictably within the framework of the story.
And that, I think, is what is so calming about In the Night Garden. The characters are as comforting and predictable as a child’s own toys. In addition to the morning and evening ‘bookends’, each episode includes at least one song and one dance – aaaaah! I can’t praise it highly enough. For me, watching the occasional episode of In the Night Garden has helped me bust through more mental blocks than all the ‘how to’ literature I’ve read, combined. With a start like that, there will be a crop of geniuses in colleges around the globe, in ten or twenty years’ time. Yes, really.