Teacup Travels

Two children, presented initially as brother and sister but more latterly cousins, visit their rather eccentric Great Aunt Lizzie to share a liquid “almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea” and be taken off on historical adventures in frankly rather dull lands all curiously inhabited by the same people with wigs and fake moustaches. Charlotte and Elliot (later Lokesh, a.k.a. Rai from Topsy and Tim) choose their adventure by selecting one of Liz’s self-professed extraordinary collection of teacups, emblazoned with the mundane artefact that will become central to the adventure, and somewhat mysteriously materialise in the house afterwards. This raises the possibility as some have suggested that far from the “tea” merely being hallucinogenic gnats’ pee, it is actually fuel for a mystic time travel portal as Liz sends these minors below the age of criminal responsibility on quests to purloin additions for her private museum. Elliot was initially believed to have given up visiting his aunt because he always got a quest about a boring stick or similar, but we can exclusively reveal that he was in fact removed from the story by Social Services on account of the curiously suspicious goings-on therein, which doubles up in explaining his uncoincidentally-timed teleportation to The Dumping Ground’s children’s home over on CBBC. The second series, with Lokesh, follows a slightly different format to the first, with extra recaps and explanations, just in case the identical episode-to-episode formula wasn’t blindingly obvious. One day we just wish that in a one-off but final and irreversible deviation from that formula, Charlotte or Lokesh might just nudge that sideboard the wrong way and all those wretched teacups come crashing to the floor, but we fear the supply of crockery may well be endless. Or perhaps there might one day be the adventure of Charlotte and the magic sideboard, in which she fails, and the whole thing collapses into a time paradox never to be seen again. In other words, one series (although bringing something refreshingly different to our screens for a season) was more than enough. — David

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