Wednesday 18 February 2009

You Know, We Haven't Heard from John Barrowman in a While...


...It's because he's hosting Animals at Work (CBBC). It seems to be a show about what animals do for a living. He begins the show stating "around the world, there are millions of animals that have jobs"; well, yes, but they usually have to wait until there's one going that you're not currently doing. Coming Up, there's Einstein- "an African grey parrot with a beak-load of personality". It can also imitate 200 sounds, is able to repeat the same script six times a week and works for peanuts. A bit like Barrowman. Also coming up on the show is a dog that's searching for things and a boy smelling some socks. The latter, I have no idea why it's involved in a show about Animals at Work, but this is CBBC, and I'll just let them carry on with it.

When I was a kid, I wasn't so keen on all the wildlife documentary shows that were around on CBBC at the time. The main one was "The Really Wild Show" which never really got my attention. I wasn't the biggest animal lover; mainly because I ate quite a fair share when I was younger. Then, the kid-centric animal documentary died out- much like the animals that they were studying at the time. Hey look, I'm doing satire. It's only recently that the trend has come back... Bill Oddie hosted a variation of "Springwatch" spin-offs that aired early Saturday mornings which seemed to fair pretty well in the ratings. So, it's a logical step to go back to the old "lets look at animals in a fun way!" style of wildlife documentary. I'm just a bit uneasy when John Barrowman is holding tiny fluffy creatures and making very odd facial expressions.

Each to their own.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

>a boy smelling some socks. The latter, I have no idea why it's involved in a show about Animals at Work<

The socks were made of mohair, which helps people with smelly feet. That was the animal's "job" - to provide the material to make the socks.

Friz said...

Well, guess I should have watched more than five minutes of it.

Anonymous said...

Well, he's filming season three, now. So there has to be some attraction. It's either the weird animals or it's the adorable presenter. Ok, that could be the other way around - adorable animals, weird... But anyway, its got a formula that kids like, as well as anyone who finds those mid-western vowels of Mr Barrowman soothing after a long day at work.