Watch with Mother

Watch with Mother
The opening titles from 1952. The film was reversed so the title appeared to flower.
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Original language	English
Production
Running time	15 minutes
Original release
Network	BBC1
Release	1952 (1952) – 1978 (1978), 26 years

Watch with Mother was a cycle of children's programmes created by Freda Lingstrom and Maria Bird. Broadcast by BBC Television from 1952 until 1975, it was the first BBC television series aimed specifically at pre-school children; a development of BBC radio's equivalent Listen with Mother, which had begun two years earlier. In accordance with its intended target audience of pre-school children viewing with their mothers, Watch with Mother was initially broadcast between 4:00 pm and 4:15 pm, post-afternoon nap and before the older children came home from school.

The choice of Watch with Mother for the title of the series was intended "to deflect fears that television might become a nursemaid to children and encourage bad mothering".

Show cycles

Although Andy Pandy had been regularly broadcast every week since mid-1950 (normally on Tuesdays), and was joined by Flower Pot Men in December 1952 (normally on Wednesdays), the name Watch with Mother was not adopted until April 1953, shortly before the programming was expanded to three afternoons a week with the addition of Rag, Tag and Bobtail that September. The "classic" cycle of shows was in place by September 1955, with the first showing of The Woodentops.

Broadcast at 1:30 pm each day, it comprised:

• Picture Book – Mondays, from 1955
• Andy Pandy – Tuesdays
• Flower Pot Men – Wednesdays
• Rag, Tag and Bobtail – Thursdays
• The Woodentops – Fridays, from 1955

Each of the five classic shows actually consisted of only a very small number of episodes, all made on film – and all in black-and-white. Typically, not more than 26 programmes were filmed for each show, this being sufficient for a run of six months as there was only one broadcast per week. The aim was to provide children's programming on the cheap: the BBC Children's department had an extremely tiny budget, and needed a collection of films which could be endlessly repeated, typically in six-monthly cycles, for its undemanding pre-school age audience.

From April 1963, Watch with Mother was moved to 10.45am (with a further slot at 1.30pm from September 1963). Tales of the Riverbank joined the Watch with Mother Monday slot in December 1963, and caused worries that the original five shows would be replaced.

Subsequent shows that occupied the Watch with Mother slots included:

• Camberwick Green – 1966 to 1985
• Pogles' Wood – 1966 to 1973
• Trumpton – 1967 to 1985
• Bizzy Lizzy – 1967 to 1969
• The Herbs – 1968 to 1975
• Chigley – 1969 to 1985
• Mary, Mungo and Midge – 1969 to 1978
• Mr Benn – 1971 to 1993
• Fingerbobs – 1972 to 1984
• Bagpuss – 1974 to 1986
• Clangers – 1969

From 1978 – See-Saw and legacy

In 1978, the Watch with Mother title was dropped, as it was considered to be dated, and the strand was known as See-Saw from 1980 to 1990.

In the early 2000s, the shows Andy Pandy and Flower Pot Men were remade as stop motion animations (the latter as Bill and Ben), which aired on CBeebies.^{[citation needed]}

Programming

Shows included in the Watch with Mother and See-Saw slots were as follows:

UK VHS releases (1987–1993)

Between 1987 and 1993, four compilation videos with Watch with Mother shows have been released by the BBC. The first became a bestselling success, and by the end of 1990 was the highest-selling individual VHS release from the Corporation.

A 45 rpm promotional single was available to radio disc jockeys, for promo only, entitled "Flob-A-Dob-A-Ben", in 1987. The single was not released on general release and was played often as a novelty record by Radio Trent on the Andy Marriott Television Show.^{[citation needed]}

See also

• For the Children, a television programme for school-age children that ran from 1937.
• Children's BBC, the name used to refer to the children's programming block from 1985.
• CBeebies, a free-to-air BBC channel launched in 2002, carrying programming for children five years and under.

References

Notes

Bibliography

External links

• More information and clips from the programmes
• Link to complete listing & details about all the programmes
• Link to Museum of Broadcast