The Ultimate In Saturday Morning Kids TV

All the talk of nostaligia this morning got me to thinking, what was the most significant Saturday morning kids show for me? Remember when all cartoons were linked by a show that would go on from approximately 9.25am until well after noon? I was looking for this to add to the collection earlier, but with no success. Ladies and gentlemen, I give to you ‘Round The Bend‘

boxfront

Ok, so this is the cover of the ZX Spectrum video cassette, but have you any idea how difficult it is to find anything to do with Round The Bend? I can’t express just how much of an influence this show was on me during my formative years, with its toilet based shennanigans leaving me doubled up in knots every saturday morning as a carefree 8 year old.

In what was essentially Spitting Image for kids, this was a peurile, disgusting, foul show, which I couldn’t have loved more. Very few people in my class watched it, but I remember how excited I would be when it was on. The parodies of popular cartoons such as ‘Wee Man & The Masters of the Loo-niverse’ were not too far removed from Viz material.

With pretty much everything that was ever filmed in the world ever now available on the internet, I have never been able to find more than a few minor clips of this. If ANYONE has video recordings of this, please get in contact with me! I’m sure that we can sort something out.

Round the Bend was a real one off, it never underestimated kids and hit our screens just before all kids TV became banal, ‘extreme’ shite with lots of squealing and shiny paedophiles. It was filthy, rotten and a terrible influence, which was exactly what kids want.

It was replaced in 1989 by the hugely inferior Ghost Train, which whilst trying pretty hard (and we liked Nobby The Sheep), could never live up to the legacy that Doc Croc and companions left behind.

Round The Bend

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zombiehamster on July 25, 2009 | Filed Under Television

5 Comments

essjayess  on July 25th, 2009

Oh the memories! I LOVED Round The Bend, if you stuck this in the kids tv schedules nowadays it would melt faces and mount the ratings like an angry stallion. ^_^

zombiehamster  on July 27th, 2009

Damn right it would. Do you think that it’s answerable for a lot of our erratic, disjointed, non sequiter based humour?

Bob  on March 18th, 2011

Hi, you probably know by now and/or will never see this post, but: every episode of Round the Bend is available for streaming from Tony Husband’s site! (He was one of the writers / creators.)

http://www.tonyhusband.co.uk/rtbvideowall.html

It would probably be a good idea to streamrip them with orbit downloader or something in case they ever disappear from there, since as you say RTB material is otherwise not easy to find.

My experience somewhat mirrors yours, as a kid I loved it and thought it was easily the best thing on TV, but I was asking around recently and so far none of my friends / relatives seem to remember it, which I just can’t understand …

zombiehamster  on March 21st, 2011

Hi Bob. That is fantastic news. Thank you so much for sharing. I am going to get stuck into them right away. I have such love for Round The Bend. It was one of the best things ever. I really appreciate you sending me the link for this man. Let the ‘Bend’ marathon commence forthwith. ^_^

It is strange how so few of our peers don’t remember this show, maybe the humour didn’t resonate with everyone as it seemed to with some. Personally, I think it was one of the highlights of my comedy based afternoon viewing. I can’t wait to see how it holds up.

Bob  on March 23rd, 2011

Yeah, I suppose mostly it was just ahead of its time. The writers treated kids as sentient beings capable of appreciating satire, and weren’t afraid to work blue and/or dark if it made the joke funnier.

I’ve edited the wikipedia article, so other “benders” should have a considerably easier time finding the link …

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