A few years ago, I wrote about the launch of The Children's Channel in 1984. Available only on cable television at the time, it was Britain's first channel dedicated to children's television. While it featured numerous American imports, it also contained plenty of homegrown programming.
One of these programmes was The Alphabet Game, produced by Thames Television, who also contributed Funfit and Bits and Pieces for the channel. It ran for 30 episodes from the launch of the channel and was hosted by John Piper. Footage of the programme, like most of The Children's Channel's early days, is hard to come by online. Luckily, the BFI hold at least 10 of the episodes. The Thames archive from the mid-1980s also isn't badly affected by missing materials, so the whole series could still be up on a dusty shelf somewhere.
But we can take a very brief look at The Alphabet Game today. Today, John Piper's daughter got in touch with me to say she had a behind the scenes shot of the series, so here it is.
As you can see, it's a rudimentary set. Julian Mounter - head of programmes at Thorn EMI and previously of Thames - stated at the time that it was made towards the lower end of Thames' budgets. Nonetheless, I really like the geometric design in the background, and the dragon puppet has a cutesy 1980s aesthetic. Plus, John Piper's shirt is wonderfully of the era, perhaps it's a St Michael special? And I haven't even mentioned how amazing those Thames cameras look.
Along with my feature on what it was like to be a runner on The Children's Channel in 1989, this photo helps build a better understanding of those early days of the channel. It would be even better to get hold of footage from when the channel launched, at present it's so forgotten it almost feels like unexplored territory. As ever, if you have any recordings, please get in touch!
I’ve got a new book for sale on Amazon out and it’s called 172 Forgotten British Children’s TV Shows From The 1980s - click here to find out more.
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