Watch With Mother Revisited

When I first came back to the UK at the age of 5 I had missed a lot of cultural touchstones that many of the other children grew up with. Perhaps that’s why I very quickly became an avid watcher of TV, to try to catch up. When I think back to those early memories of TV two programmes come to mind most readily, Play School and Watch With Mother (WWM). The former fell foul of the over zealous wiping of old TV programmes that any Doctor Who fan will be familiar with, but the latter very luckily escaped the worst effects of the cull and even some of the early black and white programmes still exist in the archive. In this series of blogs I will be watching selected episodes of my favourite WWM programmes and reflecting on why I loved them at the time, and whether I still enjoy them now.

Mary, Mungo and Midge Re-view

Memory plays funny tricks on you at times. There is no doubt that a number of WWM programmes came and went without making any impression on me. At random, I chose the week of November 30 to December 4 1970 to look at what was on in the WWM schedule. Monday was Mary, Mungo and Midge, Tuesday was On the Farm which I have absolutely no memory of, Wednesday was Camberwick Green, Thursday was The Herbs and Friday was The Flowerpot Men. Despite remembering four of the five from that time, not all of them made a lasting impression. So, why was Mary, Mungo and Midge my first favourite programme? I decided to take a look at three of the episodes from the beginning, middle and end of the run to get a flavour of how it looks over 50 years on, and to see why it might have stood out.

Mary is a girl who lives on the 8th floor of a tower block in the flat with flowers growing in the window. Mungo is her often exasperated dog who has a lot of trouble with the mischievous mouse Midge. As soon as the music started I remembered it immediately and pictured myself as 5 or 6 years old watching it on a black and white TV. Every episode began with an introduction to the town with its tall buildings and short buildings courtesy of the fantastic narrator, Richard Baker. I remember recognising his voice when I heard the early evening news and feeling somehow that little bit safer. He takes us through the town until we see the tower block where Mary and her parents live. This was, I think, quite a new concept in the 1960s when the programme was made, and it was quite literally a window into how other children might live. It was an early attempt to show a child who the viewers could really identify with. Mary could easily have been that girl in your class that you sat next to if you were fortunate. She might even have been the girl you walked home with who seemed to be as relieved as you that school was over for the day. There was a reality to her that went beyond the simple animation. Other WWM programmes featured fantasy characters like the Clangers, or were set in towns in the county of Trumptonshire which were a vision of an England that had the social structures of the age of deference. They were fun, but you were never going to see them in real life.

The Crane

The first episode of all was The Crane, and it set the template for the series. Mary is playing with blocks and Mungo is pushing them over to her with his nose. He eventually complains that his nose is sore and that he could do with a crane to move the blocks across the playroom on to the tower that Mary is building. Mary looks across to the other side of the river where building is taking place. This would have been a very familiar sight to many children at the time, and although, or perhaps because, they were warned about the dangers children found construction sights fascinating. Unlike the adults in your life who would tell you not to do something because they said so, Mary, Mungo and Midge showed you how dangerous those places could be in an understated way. Mungo and Midge go over to the crane where the man who operates the crane and the man who loads the crates for the crane are going for their tea break! Midge takes advantage of their absence to run up to the cabin of the crane and see how it works. Mungo, who is searching for Midge, finds himself on top of a pallet attached to the crane just as Midge starts jumping on buttons! Although you know that Mungo will be fine it does demonstrate how going near cranes can be dangerous. It’s a nice first episode, but as children could join the series at any point, the introductions would be made in subsequent episodes.

Machines

Episode 7, the midpoint of the 13 episode series, focuses on the different machines that you might have seen in a town in the late 60s. We see it, as ever, through the adventures, or rather misadventures, of Mungo and Midge as the latter causes chaos in a very restrained way! There are machines that dispense milk, those that dispense chocolate, those you talk into (a telephone box) and those you put your clothes into at a launderette. It is educational in a Reithian way and it makes a trip to town an opportunity to discover something new.

Seaside

This is an episode that takes the trio outside of the town to the seaside. This makes it quite an unusual episode, and it turns out that for this final episode of the 13 programme series, the usual narrative format is very much thrown out. We find out what the countryside just outside the town looks like as the three are driven to the beach. There are people sunbathing, although no doubt they had suntan oil rather than sunscreen in those days! Mary and Mungo are busily building a sandcastle while Midge is getting up to mischief. Eventually, Midge settles down for a sleep on top of the sandcastle and has a fever dream! He finds himself in scenes from all twelve of the previous programmes which, of course, the regular viewer will have great fun trying to spot!

Final Thoughts

It was a real pleasure immersing myself in the simple, safe world of Mary, Mungo and Midge again. As an adult I could see the way that the programme sought to inform, educate and entertain all the young children who watched it, wherever they came from, and it succeeded on all three counts. The stories were simple, without being simplistic, the narration courtesy of Richard Baker brilliant and the animation very effective as they took you into its two dimensional world. I can see why it was my favourite programme at the time. It was invaluable to me as I tried to understand England after spending the three previous years in Singapore, and it would have given me an insight that allowed me to at least pretend that I knew what was going on in my new home.

Next time, I revisit a certain shop where a saggy old cloth cat has strange items brought to him every week!