7 /10 1 Votes
Country of origin United Kingdom Running time 15 minutes Final episode date 1955 Original network BBC1 | 6.9/10 IMDb Original language(s) English First episode date 1953 Network BBC One Language English | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Original release 1953 (1953) – 1975 (1975) Genre Children's television series Similar Blue Peter, The Sky at Night, Panorama, Camberwick Green, The Herbs | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
A week of watch with mother monday picture book
Watch with Mother was a cycle of children's programmes created by Freda Lingstrom and Maria Bird. Broadcast by BBC Television from 1953 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 3:45 pm and 4:00 pm, post-afternoon nap and before the older children came home from school.
Contents
- A week of watch with mother monday picture book
- A week of watch with mother tuesday andy pandy
- Show cycles
- References
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'".
A week of watch with mother tuesday andy pandy
Show cycles
Although Andy Pandy had been regularly broadcast every Tuesday since mid-1950, joined by the Flower Pot Men in December 1952, the name Watch with Mother was not adopted until 1953, when the programming was expanded to three afternoons a week with the addition of Rag, Tag and Bobtail. 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:
The original programmes had a loyal following and there was concern when it was learned that they would be replaced by new programmes, as in 1965 when it was thought that Camberwick Green would replace Andy Pandy and Flower Pot Men. Eventually the new programmes were added, including: Tales of the Riverbank, Pogles' Wood, The Herbs, Joe, the Trumptonshire trilogy, Barnaby, Mr Benn, Bagpuss, Fingerbobs, Bod and Bizzy Lizzy.
By 1975 the Watch with Mother title had been dropped, as it was considered to be dated, and by 1980 the strand had been named See-Saw. A Watch with Mother video became a best-seller in 1987, and was followed by a second in 1989. A 45 rpm promotional single was available to radio disc jockeys for promo only entitled "Flob-A-Dob-A-Ben". The single was not released for general release and was played often as a novelty record on Radio Trent, in 1987, on the Andy Marriott Television Show. Since the shows were a great success and fondly remembered by many, modern incarnations of the shows Andy Pandy and Flower Pot Men have been produced.
Under British law, copyright of TV programmes lasts for 50 years from the date of first broadcast. As such, surviving episodes first transmitted between 1952 and 1967 are slowly appearing on the Internet Archive.