oliver postgate r.i.p.

this is an episode of the clangers, one of my favourite children's tv programmes ever. i watched it recently with some american friends, and the pace was much too slow for them, whereas i am calmed and comforted still by these gentle stories. i post it today in memory of one of its creators, oliver postgate, who died yesterday at the age of 83.

the telegraph obit comments:

"His programmes were simple and uncluttered, yet stimulating and not unsophisticated. They eschewed the frenetic matiness of later generations of children's television, winning the trust of their audience instead by old-fashioned reliance on plot and characterisation and by an appeal to a child's instinctive belief in magic. In short, they did not treat television as a special art but as a three-dimensional extension of the story book."

the rest is here.