Dougal and the Blue Cat
Creepy majesty of lost Magic Roundabout film
We have become so desensitised to violence and gore that it takes a lot for a film to be considered ‘creepy’ these days. So, when I received a film accompanied by a quote from the Guardian claiming it’s ‘one of the creepiest films ever made’, I was slightly sceptical...oh yeah, and also because it was a film spin off of The Magic Roundabout and called Dougal and the Blue Cat.
So Dougal hasn’t been sleeping well, no doubt due to the existential anxieties weighing on any intelligent member of today's society. This is unusual however, as before now, Dougal has always been such a sound sleeper. Lying in this state of anxiety he hears a mysterious, mellifluous voice from the old treacle factory proclaiming the joys of being blue, ‘Blue is beautiful, blue is best!’
No one else has much time to listen to Dougal’s worries, because they are all so absorbed in their important tasks, like – sleeping, conducting a French choir, or... being a snail. Still our little furry protagonist is troubled, and more so on the arrival of a mysterious new personality into the Magic Garden – Buxton the (creepily Northern) Blue Cat.
Of course Buxton and the evil voice are in cahoots, and apparently trying to inflict blueness on the universe.
So ensues a battle of wits and ingenuity in which Dougal tries in vain to convince his friends that his paranoia is substantiated and not due to the side affects of any ‘sugar’ addiction, or to his naturally predilection to pessimism.
Eventually it comes down to Dougal to adopt the alias Blue Peter (it was literally half an hour before I got that joke) and resist great temptation, battling all his natural urges in order to topple the azure autocrat Buxton in his army filled, nightmarish lair and reinstate peace in the Magic Garden.
This is a film that encapsulates the best qualities of children’s television from a bygone era. Not only is it artistic, and aesthetically charming, but the dialogue is not simplified into childish garble. There are idiosyncratic touches that add a weird depth to the programme – patriotic scarecrows, jokes about Barnsley and subtle suggestions of adult themes touched on with the lightest hand, which produce the surreal, blurry edged, psychedelic quality which makes a whole different kind of adult enjoy it. And dang, it is QUITE creepy, or at least unsettling, maybe even a tad inappropriate – and that’s brilliant! You don’t get telly like that today, at least not telly that’s primarily aimed at children, instead it’s in the weirdness of Garth Marenghi, the joie de vivre of The Mighty Boosh and the thankyou-baked-potato weirdness of Shooting Stars rolled into one lovely bubbly mind expanding jam. Yum. Jam.
So THAT’S what’s wrong with kids these days – the quality of their programming, there’s no subtexts, no creepy nightmarish sequences (the original version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was full of these). Instead of talking to kids like a posh and a bit mental Oxbridge uncle, we now talk to them like idiots. And then they become idiots, shouting ‘Again! Again!’ and being little brats who are scared of the world.
So it’s our fault, or more specifically it’s your fault In The Night Garden, The Tweenies, The Tellytubbies. Yeah! Fuck You Tinky Winky!
Dougal and the Blue Cat is released on November 1 2010 by Second Sight Films.
Related articles
CHOICE
