In the Night Garden...

The perennial mainstay of the CBeebies “bedtime hour”, no-one’s quite sure why ITNG maintains its place in the schedule. Calming to children, apparently: well so long as they’re not phobic about terrifying inflatables and generally the stuff of inescapable nightmares. More likely the reality is that creator Anne Wood continues to enjoy her stranglehold on the BBC’s children’s output, churning out no end of balderdash like this, the Teletubbies (revived for no obvious reason) and Abney and Teal. ITNG ultimately represents the epitome of Wood’s obsession with quantity-over-quality (100 episodes, really?!) low-rent bodysuit productions, as well as the nadir of Derek Jacobi’s already desperately lacklustre post-Cadfael television career. Well isn’t that a pip? Not really, to be honest. — David

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