Catweazle: Series 1, Episode 1- The Sun in a Bottle

 "I'll feed thee anon, bizzlegut!"

Fear not; I'm stil blogging the usual stuff, I just needed something short to fill limited time. So this isn't, at least for now, the start of me blogging all of Catweazle, not least because Britbox only has this episode.

It's a fun little kids' show, though; the fashions and, especially, the cartoon opening titles, reveal this to be a fifty year old television programme, but it's a wonder to behold. I can't begin to imagine anything like this being made today, party because it's very noticeably an all-male cast (did nobody notice?), but because fun, intelligent, whimsical, live action telly for children is a thing of the past.

This is an entertaining and successful introductory episode in that it introduces Catweazle- a wizard from 11th century England, shortly after the Conquest, who finds himself in a spot of bother with a bunch of Normans speaking a suspiciously modern, Parisian French and then, via some kind of magic, a barn somewhere in the West Country in the age of Harold Wilson and Jimi Hendrix. It's quite a culture shock, and we have some fun with tractors end electric lights while establishing his friendship with young Carrot, and that he's to be kept a secret.I think we probably ought to gloss over the fact that modern English and old English are certainly not mutually intelligible.

But there are two things which are truly wonderful. One is Gorffrey Bayldon's extraordinary charismatic performance, bonkers yet mesmerising from the first scene as a character who nicely taps into that contemporary counterculture fascination with a pagan past- never mind that pre-conquest England was nothing of the sort. And the other, despite the historical nonsense of having Catweazle speak a kind of cod-Shakespearan early modern English from much closer to our time than his, is the poetic richness of the dialogue.

One day, I hope, I shall see more.