"the Mr. Men Show": Pod People at Play

[wayshway]

One always experiences an acute sense of trepidation upon hearing that the sacred cows of childhood are being remade. The knee-jerk response is usually something like: "WHAT?! How dare they?! WHY? What’s wrong with the old one? Why tamper with something that isn’t broken?" And if you're British you'll probably add "Are they going to use American voice actors?" Drastic remakes of older shows usually provoke a mixture of moral indignation and outrage.

What are these things, and what have they done to my childhood?!
It's probably one of those atavistic human quirks—the Greeks probably lamented Roman adaptations of their plays, political systems and gods. Change the objects of our rose-tinted, nostalgia-haloed past? You might as well rip out our stomachs with fishhooks whilst saying rude things about our mothers.

So, I must admit, I was already sharpening my critical pencil even as I accepted the assignment to review the new Mr. Men Show for Toon Zone. What I got, though, was something even I wasn't prepared for: a show of such staggering awfulness that it's not even worth hating. But more on that in a moment.

The Mr. Men Show stems, ultimately, from a series of 1970's children's books written and illustrated by Roger Hargreaves, which featured a host of colourful, simply drawn characters called the Mr. Men. Each was a living charactonym, with a name and design illustrating his defining personality trait. The round, yellow, smiling Mr. Happy, for example, was always happy; the blue, rectangular, frowning Mr. Grumpy was always grumpy; and so on. Each Mr. Man was the star of his own book, which would typically feature him in a situation where his trait became a problem, leading to such lessons as "You must not be so grumpy or nosey or mean." They were also marked by their resistance to Hollywood-style character reforms. Mr. Mean, for example, memorably ends his book by giving his brother two lumps of coal for Christmas instead of the usual one. He might have learnt his lesson, but he’s still a mean old git!

The books were tremendously successful, especially in the UK, where they spawned the spin-off "Little Miss" books (featuring a similar set of female characters) and a much-loved animated series. That series, narrated by Arthur Lowe of Dad’s Army fame, was based closely on the books and perfectly captured both their tone and look. Lowe was especially good at giving the Mr. Men humorous voices, and at giving the whole show a distinctly English flavour: a polite and slightly stuffy veneer pierced by a streak of absurdism. It also featured memorably twee title music. A successful American remake in the 1990s featured new title music, narration, actors and live action skits. But while it retained the same character designs and animation style, it also, predictably, removed much of the wit whilst heavily Americanising the characters. But it proved a hit and became the number one watched US kids show that year.

The real Mr. Nosey (left) and his ersatz replacement.
Now from Mark Risley (Rugrats, As Told by Ginger, Rocket Power) comes a new remake for a new generation, airing on Cartoon Network in the US and Channel Five in the UK. Unusually, the US and UK versions of the show feature two entirely different sets of voice actors, and the official website is geo-locked so that US and UK viewers can only hear their respective versions of the characters. I dug around the UK website to get a feel for what the UK version is like (quite loud, with regional accents, I can report), but for the show itself I was given the American version to watch.

I don't know whether to feel privileged or violated.

The makers of the new The Mr. Men Show have made a lot of changes to the original Hargreaves designs, presumably to 'modernise' them. Not one of these changes is warranted or successful. The original Mr. Nosey, for instance, was chiefly defined by his nose, and everything about him was designed to suggest that he goes about sticking his nose into anything and everything. Absolutely nothing in the redesign, though, suggests