TV: Old Favourites

[DanaC]

One the greatest children's programmes ever made - Rentaghost! ran from 1976 to 1984. My Bro and I used to watch this together.

From Wiki:

The company, located in South Ealing, is run by Fred Mumford, a recently deceased loser who feels he can find work for ghosts whose lives were as failed as his. His first (and only) recruits are Timothy Claypole, a mischievous jester with a comical lack of knowledge about modern technology; and Hubert Davenport, a delicate Victorian-era gentleman who is morally shocked by the modern world. The ghosts work from an office, which they rent from Harold Meaker, who discovers the truth about them in the third episode.

Over the course of several series, other characters were added: Hazel the McWitch, a Scottish witch; Nadia Popov, a Dutch ghost who suffers from hay fever and teleports away when she sneezes; and the pantomime horse Dobbin, who first appears in a one-off Christmas special called "Rentasanta" and is brought to life by Claypole, who is unable to cancel the spell afterwards – thus allowing Dobbin to remain in the show for the rest of the run.

The very first episode - like most comedy pilots it has its shaky moments - they found their feet very quickly though:




I think pretty much every kid watched this show. What was brilliant about it, and about quite a lot of kids' tv shows from that time, was that they didn't patronise their viewers. And they didn't try to forcefeed you with moral messages. They just tried to capture your imagination and make you laugh. Watching it now it has quite a grownup air about it for a kids' show. It's not that different in tone to many of the adult sitcoms of the day. Just with a much higher degree of whimsy and silliness :P

Also notable and pretty standard for many kids' shows at the time - not much in the way of children in it.

Cultural note: half day closing. Most shops used to close for half a day during the week as well as Sundays.