We Re-Watched A Bunch Of Old ABC Kids Shows; How Does Your Favourite Stack Up?

This week we’re celebrating the very best of Australian TV. You can check out our list of The 60 Greatest Australian TV Shows Of All Time right here.

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Beyond its obvious function of being entertaining and fun for children, one measure for good kids entertainment is being able to engage the adults in the room — or at least not to cause retinal tearing from excessive eye-rolling (looking at you, Teletubbies). The Simpsons and Spice World are the gold standard here — yes, really: the latter is a very thoughtful rumination on celebrity culture, don’t argue with me.

But how do all those ABC kids’ shows that you were glued to during the after-school hours of the ‘90s stack up? As an adult human who professes to have decent taste, I took the time the watch some of the classics back and cast a critical eye on them. In conclusion: it was a bit weird.

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Genie From Down Under

Between this, Aladdin and Christina Aguilera, genies were definitely one of the ‘in’ paranormal beings of the ‘90s. This co-production with the BBC only ran a couple of seasons, so in case you’ve forgotten: a snobby British tween acquires an opal necklace containing a rough ‘n’ tumble outback genie and his son who grant her wishes very literally, misadventures ensue.

Between the “let’s trick some adults” premise of many of the plot lines and main character Penelope’s (Alexandra Milman) tendency to break the fourth wall and address the camera, it feels like a bizarre cross between The Parent Trap and House of Cards. The fish-out-of-water set-up with toffy Brit Penelope having to get by in the outback is a well-trodden theme, but it works. The writing is genuinely sharp too — the Genie’s refusal to grant wishes for money because it would cause inflation undoubtedly soared over many 12-year-olds’ heads.

It gets a little overwrought at times. Maybe kids have really short memories, but the plot lines blur into each other often, usually centring entirely around the Genie (your favourite daddy, Rhys Muldoon) screwing something up. Plus it gets a little too hammy between the bumbling bad guys, and the genies’ tendency to spout rhymes. It can also be tricky to suspend one’s disbelief at the fact that such an ocker genie somehow spouts a totally sanitised version of Australian English, devoid of phrases like “get it up ya” or the c-word.

But a bit like an episode of Friends, it’s tacky and yet still amusing.

Nostalgia: 4/10. It didn’t really take me back, save for the hip-hop inspired theme tune and shitty special effects.

Quality: 6/10

Free advertising for Tourism Australia: 8/10

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Round The Twist

It’s amazing that somebody thought spending taxpayer money on programming that’s roughly “Cronenberg 4 Kidz” would be a good idea, and yet the ABC managed to pump out many seasons of Round The Twist without ever being accused of cultural Marxism for its graphic content. The show’s strangeness is writ large in my brain — the nearly-banned episode where Pete is impregnated and carries demon spawn in his stomach is still seared into my memory — but it’s surprising to see that strangeness hold up 15 years later.

Unlike other freaky kids’ entertainment of the time (with shows like Ren and Stimpy, whose writers seemed to love vomiting their subconscious onto TV), the weirdness of Twist is channeled into remarkably cohesive episodes, grounded in a charming and not overdone portrait of kitsch Australiana. The premise — a city family make a seachange, and purchase a lighthouse afflicted by paranormal activity — inexplicably steers clear of being cheesy. But it’s sufficiently wacky so as to not be predictable: the episode I watched where Bronson swallows a fish that turns his penis into a propeller legitimately kept me guessing.

That said, the show’s love of toilet humour and cooties jokes don’t quite translate in the same way for an adult audience — but perhaps it’s unreasonable to expect sophisticated humour from a show with episodes like ‘Skeleton on the Dunny’. Given it was filmed over a 12-year period, the ever-shifting cast is also a little jarring. But it’s overwhelmingly well-written and well-acted and has aged remarkably well.

Nostalgia: 8/10. If you can’t remember the theme tune, your childhood was lacking.

Quality rating: 9/10

Would this show get made today?: 1/10

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The Ferals

Perhaps I was a child obsessed with cleanliness and order, because although I remember the Jim Henson-esque Ferals (four puppets based on domestic animals gone off the rails) being prominent on the ABC, I never felt a particular affinity for them. While only two seasons of The Ferals were actually made, ABC got some major mileage out of its contract puppet-makers by recycling them throughout other shows like Feral TV.

Unfortunately, it seems that the budget went mostly into puppetry. The writing is sledgehammer blunt, and the non-animal actors deliver their lines with the charisma of an average high school play where everything! Is an exclamation! That style might get the point across for kids, but it’s grating to an adult.

It’s a shame because there was promise to the premise. The four Ferals are a well-devised ensemble, even if the cat, Modigliana, is unambiguously derived from Miss Piggy. There are pop culture references and dark jokes that were a little elevated for a kid too. The rabbit is named Mixy, for example, after an introduced disease that was intended to kill off wild bunnies. But ultimately, these don’t quite land like they used to — much like the rest of the show.

Nostalgia: 5/10

Quality: 3/10

Muppets copyright infringement: 4/10

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Heartbreak High

Maybe because it aired for so long (more than 200 episodes!), I didn’t have any precise memories of Heartbreak High, just a general notion of the show as being a blander, Australianised version of Degrassi. But, watching now, it’s actually a thoroughly striking portrait of high school malaise. In some ways it works better as a vignette of suburban Australian life for a teen in the ‘90s rather than purely a piece of entertainment.

The depictions of dickheaded Aussie male machismo, racism and sexism are brutally raw and relatable for anyone who went to a school with even a modicum of diversity. As with most youth-oriented entertainment, the acting is hardly subtle, but the storylines are nuanced and thought-out (though the writers do seem to put more value in the storylines centered around male characters) and they do sometimes fall into pretty standard teen drama tropes: pregnancy, body image, fraught masculinity, and so on. But it’s a nice touch that the adults also get dedicated storylines. It’d be a shame to waste an alluring onscreen presence like Ernie Dingo.

The only major annoyance is the tendency for Heartbreak High to end every episode on a positive note. The fixation on saccharine, warm-hug closure for each episode’s key problem is tiring — but it’s a winner if you can look past that.

Nostalgia: 2/10

Quality: 8/10

Cultural cringe: 7/10

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Tim Forster is an Australian broadcaster and writer based in Montreal, Canada. He’s produced content for Hello Mr., New Matilda and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. In his spare time, he can be found cycling militantly, exploring urban landscapes and tweeting tacky Canadiana at @timothyjforster.