We’ll have plenty of opportunities to talk about the story itself, so, I’ll start doing that on my second review. Tonight I’ll focus on the choice of this show and why I find that extremely bewildering. Once I get that out of my system, I promise I’ll get down to the plot and character elements next week. So bear with me until then.
S01E01 – “The Sun in a Bottle”
I’M BEWILDERED
OK, not as annoying as I’d expected. Not that that says much because I really didn’t expect much, but we might just as well start with the positive side.
First of all, it’s short. Just 24 minutes. With Star Cops I’d start checking my watch every few minutes after the first half hour. In that particular, Catweazle is an improvement. And while we’re at it, the comparison is apt in many ways. Here we have a children’s show which will never amount to much because of precisely that, it’s a children’s show, but we see that in practically all technically aspects it’s vastly superior to Star Cops. Perhaps now the point I’ve been trying to make finally gets through. After all, if you like this show’s pacing, directing, editing and everything else that defines a dramatic narrative and television, you simply cannot say this is what you’d expect from a good television production and at the same time find that amateur experiment which was Star Cops anything to be taken seriously. And say what you will about this silly show, it’s technically accurate and meets all the requirements modern audiences would expect a professionally show to meet. Star Cops, on the other hand…
So, Catweazle is short, competently made as far as technical aspects are concerned, the actor is formidable (his madman look of a man out of his time in a world he can’t possibly understand is priceless) and the premise is interesting. The problem? I’d the problem is us, the audience.
The thing is, this is a children’s show. There’s no mistaking. It’s a show that was aired in the 1970s at 5 o’clock. In the afternoon. In broad daylight. On a Sunday. Right before I suppose English children would have dinner at 6 and be in bed by eight. Different people, different times. So, this show was made for children. And as a kiddies show the stakes will never, ever be high. Writers simply wouldn’t be able to risk upsetting children in the way necessary for creating a credible and moving story. And to add insult to injury, this was made for children of the 1970s. That is to say, children that are no longer children. In other words, Catweazle was made for an audience that no longer exists.
That brings me the question, why on earth would anybody want to watch this show now. This is the right show, right? I mean, if it was a practical joke on me, you can finally tell me, because, guys I really fell for it. For a minute I really thought that was the show everyone was raving about. OK, I’m going to assume this is the right show just for the sake of argument.
Would any current-day child enjoy this show? I can’t imagine any would. This show seems to be naive and out of touch with our reality. And an adult watching this for the first time? Would a situation like this be believable? Say, a man at work telling his pals in the office, “oh man, I can hardly wait to have a few drinks after work with my friends and then run home to catch up on some old Catweazle episodes.” I can’t think of that happening.
The only answer that makes a little sense to me is that magical word, which is not “electrickery,” but, something much more powerful. A magical word capable of transforming lead into gold, and much more. The magical word is nostalgia!
I checked the imdb reviews of the show and they’re 100% “I grew up watching this show,” or “I used to watch this show as a kid” or “when I was a boy I loved this show,” etc. I’m yet to find a review of someone saying “I learned of this show last weak and now I simply love it.” Pure nostalgia.
I understand the power of nostalgia, even though I don’t always connect with it on an emotional level, at least as far as television is concerned. I used to love certain shows made in the 1960s -- or at least I used to watch them regularly because, you know, lack of options… After all, we had only three or four channels, so whatever programming for children they aired, that’s what we would watch. It was that or, I don’t know, read a book or something.
Anyway, there were shows I did enjoy back in the day, but now if I watch them I’m perfectly capable of admitting they were going good in a very specific context, but they absolutely fail the test of time. So, if now I happened to turn on the TV and they happened to be showing Lost in Space, or Banana Split, Skippy the Bush Kangaroo or Flipper, I’d have no problems to admit these were pretty crappy shows. So, I understand nostalgia, but I wouldn’t want to consume the same shows again in the name of it.
This is why I’m bewildered.
Coming up next: taking the show apart. Why the premise of Catweazle has a fatal flaw that changes everything! But you’ll have to wait for next week.
My grade: I’m not a kid, and nothing in this show remotely connects with my sense of nostalgia. But I imagine that hypothetical kid watching his black and white vacuum tube television in a small English town in 1970 would’ve given this pilot a 9 or a 10, while, from my from my grownup 2018 perspective, I want to give it a 1 or a 2. So, let’s be fair and give it the average:
5 ponds that become puddles in 900 years (that part w
