Enuff already with the Daleks. How about talking about a more contemporary kids show. One which is altogether more bonkers that even Doctor Who was in its turning Tom Baker into a cactus days. Saturday morning kids TV has become a playground of halfhearted madness. I am not even referring to the Ministry Of Mayhem, the ho-hum SM:TV replacement which is 20% No.73, 20% Tiswas and 60% bad. I am talking about the Other Side which has moved to another Other Side. The BBC1, now BBC2 offering : The Mysti Show.
After perennial tweeking and ripping off of its competitors format, The Saturday Show finally vanquished SM:TV, admittedly due to the latter’s loss of Ant & Dec. However after retruning from Dick’n’Dom hiatus, the Saturday Show was shunted back to 8am, to finish at 10am. Top Of The Pops Saturday remains to battle CD:UK at 11am, so what do they fill this hour with. Yet again I say the stranbge words: The Mysti Show.
What is this MYSTerIous show? Well it is an hour long drama/comedy/fantasy/talk show/wish fulfillment programme. Still none the wiser? Well the website doesn’t help (but you do get to see who Mysti is: she is the the one with the permanent yet slightly lackluster smile). Okay, from what I have gathered: Mysti is a half human/half fairy godmother to a stroppy earth girl who gets into scraped. There is a boy who Mysti also fancies, but no-one is supposed to know she is a fairy. She lives in fairy land, which looks like a cheap TV studio with a giant plush mushroom in it. Fairy land also seems to have regular pop stars visiting who Mysti interviews, and Mysti also grants wishes for viewers and humiliates viewers parents who can’t cook. NONE OF IT MAKES ANY SENSE!
This is probably proof that I am finally grown up. The narrative elements which weave inbetween the celebrity interviews are so poor that they are not worth following. At the same time the fairyland conceit stymies the conversations with many of the pop stars who do not understand the concept of the show. There may be some sort of basis in girls comics here (Alan suggests there was a Mysti comic a long time ago with a different premise) where there would be strips about the heroine who would also present the mag. But this kind of format blend seems to sit uneasily on television. Perhaps this is why Misti, and her chums, have been booted to BBC2 for the summer. To make way for Saturday Brunch and the awful In The Know (news/sports horror). But more on those two later.