TV habits - Britbox

In praise of… The Sooty Show and The Trap Door 

Well, here’s a Rea Ahop post I never thought I’d write… Britbox helped us survive lockdown and winter.  We’ve started re-watching W1A - it totally grinds my gears how they used the old Animal Magic music for that, and its predecessor, 2012 - so that’s all good then.  The faux-reality format gets in the way at times, but hey. 

We’ve mined-out all the the decent Classic Dr Who (Pertwee and Baker era of course), Blake’s 7 (for about the fourth time around) and have found two kids’ shows when looking round for what’s new. 

The Trap Door is 5 minutes of claymation anarchy lifted by William Rushton doing the voices, and a banging theme. 

I never took to Sooty as a kid - it all seemed a bit twee and silly in my time, plus it had switched to ITV by then. Britbox takes you back to black & whites with air dates in the mid 1950s with Ronnie Corbett.  The show had a pretty good run into the early 1990s.

It’s the quality of the puppetry, Corbett’s clowning, the working miniature props (e.g. Sooty’s Garage) and the attention to detail that makes it an interesting watch: Sweep is a driver - he sticks out an ear to signal a turn, for example.  There’s even a Sooty’s bathtime in a tin bath compete with water.