Total Licensing attended the Licensing launch of Grandpa In My Pocket on the 22 July, and it was nice to see a live action children’s television programme that, while still giving an important message and embracing themes such as family, seems to be all about fun (whilst being highly appropriate, as 1.2m children in the UK are looked after by their grandparents).
The show looks at a happy nuclear family, which possibly indicates a trend back to traditions – for many years, and rightly so, some situational children’s television has looked at the diverse nature of the family in modern times, as many children live with step-parents, half-siblings, with single or same-sex parents. However, a ‘hark back’ to a traditional concept, where there is a boy, a (slightly wacky) mum and dad, and the loveable, titular Grandpa seems, at the same time, right, as around two thirds of children in the UK do still reside with a nuclear family.
So many children’s TV programmes and films include messages, be they of love, caring, or even deeper – the film Wall-E, for example, with its lonely robot cleaning up a desolate earth after the obese, constantly-stimulated inhabitants deserted it, is one of those films. It had a very deep and resounding theme, but you have to wonder – education is of course so important in entertainment, especially from a young age, but kids will be kids. Sometimes entertainment can come in just that form, without hammering home the message that we must be green, must look after our planet, must embrace diversity in all its forms, must be politically correct, etc. The closest some of us ever got to such messages in our childhood viewing was when Big Ears hopped into bed with Noddy, and ‘back in the day’ this caused a mild furore.
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