Tales of the Riverbank

[RobB]

Not so much a Big Picture but a little tv picture....'Tales Of The Riverbank',a nostalgic childhood memory (for me,from the b/w days of the early sixties) of the adventures of Hammy the Hamster and Roderick the Rat beside the river.
I've had a video of three of these vintage episodes for a while now but yesterday I gave it another play,just to show my partners kids which must have kept them entertained for all of 10 seconds before cries of 'This is crap' and orders to put 'Hannah Montana' back on.

Obviously they don't know what they're missing?

[sound world]

Funnily enough,I got a video of that out from the Library a few years ago to show Robin -he must have been about five.He was similarly underwhelmed.
I seem to remember that the pace was so slow; the mood so much more poetic than anything kids get now; the storyline so incidental,and the acting so Hammy (BOOM BOOM sorry,couldn't resist that),that it was never going to be down with todays' kids.Pity.I used to be fascinated as a kid.
I did get him some other faves from my childhood-eg the complete set of videos for 'Robinson Crusoe' (the French series with wonderful music),'Ivor the Engine','The Clangers' etc,all of which he enjoyed.
I'd still like to get hold of one of my alltime favourites,'Lost in Space' with its cast of boringly wholesome Americans,a bonkers robot,and a wonderfully self-centred villanous Englishman who stole the show every episode.

[RobB]

I've actually got series 1 of 'Lost In Space' on dvd,complete with the pilot episode which never featured Dr Smith (i'm not sure that he was supposed to have been English!) or the Robot.

Interestingly,because the pilot was never shown (at the time,at least),the shows makers took out parts of the 'pilot' and incorporated it into the first few episodes of the series proper.

They didn't want anything to go to waste thats for sure.