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The third of the BBC's 1950s daytime pre-school series (after Andy Pandy, 1950, and The Flower Pot Men, 1952-54) took up a Thursday afternoon slot to form a Tue-Wed-Thur three-day schedule. The strand seemingly having reached critical
mass, the new Watch With Mother banner was adopted.
These were the simple adventures of three (male) woodland creatures -
hedgehog Rag, mouse Tag and rabbit Bobtail. One surviving episode demonstrates the
level of storytelling - in this example some rabbit babies get dirty in a mud
puddle but the day is saved when Tag finds a cleansing spring of water by
divining with a hazel twig. The episodes used a straightforward single narration
to describe events and provide character voices - there was none of the
interactive song-and-dance elements of Andy and the Flower Pot Men.
While Andy, Bill and Ben were controlled from above on strings, Rag, Tag and
Bobtail were glove puppets manipulated from below. The puppets were filmed using
a camera with just one plane of motion, left to right, which slowly scanned
along a basic countryside set; there were no close-ups or cut-aways. Each
13-minute episode seems to be shot in one take with no editing.
26 episodes were made but although the first two went unaired (presumably
they were technically deficient?), the remaining 24 were run repeatedly every
Thursday until finally rested in December 1965.
Alistair McGown
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Complete episode (9:15)
