As a six month veteran of the CBeebies “Bedtime Hour” it has been strange to me that this previously unknown segment of the television world has attracted so much media attention of late. It is a daily ritual for many young children between the hours of 6 and 7pm and I have been watching some or all of it with Harry almost every evening for the past six months. This time of day is a special one for me: not only is it when I get home from work to the comfort of my flat, but it is when I get to have some time with my son before his bedtime. Although I see him almost every morning before I leave the house, I don’t get a chance to sit and play with him until the evening. This odd hour can be very restful or quite fraut, depending on Harry’s mood and state of exhaustion and it marks the transition between the end of my day and the start of my evening. In essence, it is a bubble of family life that seems to exist independently of the rest of the world and the programmes, characters and presenters are all linked inextricably to this bubble so that it seems incongruous when they crop up in the spin of the “real world”.
The first and most well-known crossover from this world to yours was In the Night Garden which has found itself receiving critiques in newspapers and most recently on Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe.
However, the most recent case of intrusion by the media into our world was about one of the new duo presenting this feast of bedtime entertainment, Cerrie Burnell. When I look back on TV from my childhood, it is the programmes that I remember most fondly, but the links between them are also important as it is these people who are taking you on this trip, leading you through hours and hours of your formative years. I fondly remember people like Johnny Ball and Brian Cant as being wonderful presenters of their own shows, but it wasn’t until the era of Philip Schofield that there dedicated presenters to fill in the gaps on these journeys. I think what you appreciate most as a child watching and learning from adults is being talked to on a level and not as if you are an idiot and all of these presenters achieved that.
Cerrie Burnell
And so we come to Cerrie Burnell. Irritatingly, she has become a newsworthy subject because of her obvious disability, namely the absence of her right arm, and the supposed shock this has caused amongst parents whose children watch The Bedtime Hour. One, quoted widely, has said that “I know it would have played on my eldest daughter’s mind and possibly caused sleep problems” and has since stopped the delicate thing from being exposed to such horror every night. There must, I hope, be only a minority of people with this attitude, but it is not her disability that I have an issue with (although the way in which the stump wiggles can be a little disconcerting at times): it is her style of presentation which grates with me. I appreciate that she is presenting to the under-six age group and concessions have to be made for their level of education, but it is like she is simple. She is not helped by her co-star in our nightly escapades, Alex Winters, a man who possesses possibly the widest mouth I have ever seen. Together, they are ruining the pleasant (if bizarre) interludes once presided over by Chris Jarvis, who had a genuine talent for this type of work, and Pui Fan Lee who, although carried by Chris for the most part, was particularly likeable. It feels like Cerrie and Alex are trying to compensate for the fact that they are terrible presenters by either Cerrie overdrammatically gesticulating with is using her remaining arm or Alex just smiling inanely like a stoned cheshire cat.
My evenings with Muffin, Makka-Pakka and Lola will never be quite the same as long as this pair are puncturing my bubble. Bring back Chris and Pui and the crazy toothbrush song!
