Telly Talk: Shaun The Sheep

Once upon a time…

The other day Bernard Cribbins hit the entertainment news headlines with claims that storytelling in contemporary children’s television was at an all time low. As a Jackanory stalwart and much-loved narrator of favourites like The Wombles, Cribbins was ideally situated to consider the state of children’s telly, considering he’s been at the centre of it on and off for around 40 years. But was it just that he preferred the stop motion of Moschops in the 1980s to the modern animation all CGI’d up – was it a ‘new-fangled’ bother, or really a valid point?

“My inner rugrat was captivated”

To investigate further I had a look at the opening episode of the new series of Shaun The Sheep. The hardships I bare. Seriously, I was itching to jump up and dance to the theme tune in a jubilant and non-ironic manner from the first mad sound effect that announced this farmyard escapade was about to start. My inner rugrat was captivated. After the gong-haul of Horrible Histories and its slightly star-studded cast from the land of stand-up comedy it really shouldn’t have been a surprise to me to find this collar-grabbing fun-times song was both written and performed by Vic Reeves. There is plenty of quality talent to be found in the land of kids’ TV, and with short attention spans and an aversion to tact, it’s no easy genre to conquer.

So, already won over before the theme tune had ended I tucked in to this Aardman-inspired treat. Of course, the dog is the clever clogs, the grown ups are truly silly in their own unaware pompous manner as the narrow lane Shaun and his pals are trying to cross quickly fills with traffic as the vehicles refuse to back up to let the other past… and really they are very silly people indeed.

Communing with my childish self I squealed with laughter at every turn, from the sheep pizza-run to the ingenious chase sequence. I wanted to point details out to someone, at quite how well done this short snippet of a programme is – it is only seven minutes and they fly by with abandon. The animals are the stars and the claymation adults truly silly sausages.

The thing was, with the animals as the stars, as well as the claymation taking the delivery quality up a notch or two, this really was an exemplary bit of programme-making but for one thing: there was no narration. Bernard Cribbins was right. It’s not that I needed the story explained, or that actual children would do, but for the same reason we start introducing words to our picture books Shaun The Sheep would have only been enhanced and adorned with a creative and well written story told over it. The foley (sound effects, y’know – cars beeping, sheep bleating, there wasn’t any actual dialogue at all) was bang on, but really I wanted my little co-viewers to be learning new words alongside the chortles. If they can giggle with glee at a traffic jam then surely they might benefit from knowing what the right words to describe it might be. Or even what more than one set of words to describe it might be.

Storytelling really is a fabulous skill, broadening vocabularies and seizing attentions with a genuine compulsion. And our kids surely deserve the very best.
Shaun The Sheep, CBBC, Sunday 24 February 2013