Just watched the episode and the word that springs most to mind is charming.
This appears to be a really charming show and I think the storytelling is timeless.
Yes, it may be slower than the attention deficit children of today are programmed to cope with, but I would suggest that society is at fault there, rather than the shows of yesteryear. I think that the world needs to slow down and get back to engaging with these shows. Otherwise it is, I think, their loss.
Similarly, I think one needs to still be able to compromise and partially switch off that cynical adult and view this through the eyes of a child to really appreciate it. Otherwise there is no point in viewing it at all.
All that is left, if one does not do that, is a point by point deconstruction of each episode, listing all of it's shortcomings, which would not only be, presumably, tedious to write, but surely equally tedious to read.
As to the episode itself, Bayldon is brilliant and works well with Robin Davies.
I see Neil McCarthy is in the show. I lived in Sleaford, a town near Lincoln and, when he died, it was mentioned in the local paper that he had, years before, lived in Sleaford and attended the grammar school just up the road from my humble secondary modern.
I knew him best as Calibos in CLASH OF THE TITANS, of course. And his great role in one of the STEPTOE movies, at Albert's "funeral".
The episode sets out the stall for the show - with very much a similar feel, to me, of the later WORZEL GUMMIDGE, with an impossible character befriending the family children and having misadventures every week.
I feel that, as with many shows, a remake would fail to replicate the charm (and all-important pace and ambience) of the original, along with pointless political box ticking topped off with what I see as a general slump in the acting standards of the UK. Bland and flat-voiced acting seems to be the high water mark these days.
I have never watched this show in any focused way - although I think I saw this opening episode years ago, so it should be fun, with a bunch of comrades, journeying through this classic.
I like Michael's grading system, so will use that, but feel that through no fault of it's own that the episode is slightly restricted by having to set out the stall, which it does well, but it leaves little time for anything else. But it gets a solid mark from me nonetheless.
Grade B+
