Tuesday, February 07, 2006
L-O-L-A, Lola (and Charlie)
CUTE! Charlie and Lola, BBC1, 3.25pm
There is something vaguely embarrassing about watching children's television when you're an adult, especially if you don't have any children of your own, hence invalidating the "oh, I just watch it with my kids" excuse. If we're perfectly honest, though, Charlie and Lola is absolutely worth that mild sense of shame.
The series is based on Lauren Child's books for children, about a boy called Charlie and his little sister Lola, who's "small and very funny". This basically means that Lola sees things in extremely unusual ways and it's up to big brother Charlie to help her make sense of the world. It doesn't sound groundbreaking, but there are other things that should be taken into account: the collage-like animation, Lola's unique take on grammar ("I am very absolutely not tired, Charlie, and I will not go to bed") and the absolutely spot-on voices used (which we're fairly certain are done by young children rather than adults).
Even children's programmes need a decent supporting cast, and in this case you have Charlie's friend Marv, Lola's friend Lotta, Lola's imaginary friend Soren Lorenson and Sizzles the sausage dog. Marv is our favourite, partly because he's cool and knows about things like football, and partly because he wears a hoodie and is probably going to have an Asbo when he's older. All of the episode titles are done in Lola speak, and today's is called "There Is Only One Sun, And That Is Me" - it's casting time for the school play and Lola is determined to be the sun. If you've not seen it before, we recommend you take a look. If it doesn't make you go "awwwww", we suspect you have a heart of stone.
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3 Comments:
I'm kinda obsessed with Charlie and Lola, and don't find it problematic in the slightest.
There's some great Afro Beat for kids on the webiste too...www.charlieandlola.com and then play the Pink Milk Game under fun stuff...
By 
, at
11:47 pm
or if you want the proper official merchandise, try www.pinkmilk.co.uk
By , at
9:11 pm
There is a great range at www.juicytots.co.uk too! Plus they ship worldwide.
By , at
11:43 am
