The Nightmarish Post-Apocalyptic Hell-world of Gregory Gráinneog
Though casual viewers of Bosco may retain fond memories of a show jam-packed with incident, energy and excitement (singing, dancing, making & doing etc), serious Bosco scholars like myself know the truth behind these rose-tinted lies.
Severe budgetary constraints, coupled with a grim national mood, meant that over 65% of any individual episode's running-time was taken up with long, lingering shots of scenes like this:
The Mondrian1-inspired set does its best to try and lift the spirits, but the desolation and emptiness is impossible to shake. An absent Bosco. An empty cardboard box (carelessly-discarded). A dangling piece of string. Sorrow and despair. Beckett without the laughs.
It wasn't, however, always this gloomy. It was often worse. Especially when the bleak clay(marla)mation adventures of Gregory Gráinneog2 took centre stage. Here's the gang caught enjoying a rare moment of levity:
Garish pink skies; dark bare hills; lumpen, ruptured earth – clear indicators (recognisable to any jittery child of the 70s/80s) that here is a ruined and irradiated world. Those mad bastards have done it. They've dropped the bombs. They've blown us up.
In the midst of such terrible adversity, however, unlikely alliances are made and friendships formed. If, after all, you're the last hedgehog left on earth then hanging around a giant (fleshy) mutant boot with a motley, multi-species group of survivors mightn't seem wholly unattractive. You can, for example, share your many woes with the sad-eyed Síle Seilide…
…an even sadder-eyed and haunted-looking owl…
…and an utterly frazzled, traumatised and demonic-looking rabbit.
It's like Winnie the Pooh meets Planet of the Apes…directed by Andrei Tarkovsky (where no-one's Tigger and everyone's Eeyore).
And then there's Gregory himself – less a hedgehog and more a bipedal, scalded-horse-faced freak.
Eyes rimmed and caked with bloody tears. Body scored with countless scars and sores (like a plasticine Saint Sebastian). Simultaneously repulsive and heart-breaking.
But there are, for all that, some pleasures to be had. On a pink-skied summer evening, gathered round the twisted wreck of an old-timey car (relic of a dead civilization), the friends listen to Gregory tell bitter-sweet tales of the lost world that was (and will never be again).
July 30, 2009
21 responses to The Nightmarish Post-Apocalyptic Hell-world of Gregory Gráinneog
The rabbit was particularly psychotic, it’s true.
What about the poor old McSpud family, destined to live forever in a badly lit Tesco!
Have you recently purchased a Bosco DVD? We have one and am failing to get Oisín into it.
Thank God that we never had this in England! That plasticine owl will haunt my nightmares…
AAAAAAH. Two decades it took to erase that from my memory and now you’ve brought back the hellish visions again! You forgot the tree though.
In all fairness though this is one of the funniest things I’ve read in a long time. Is it any wonder everyone our age is so messed up.
Embarr, Bought the DVD yesterday and was about 15 minutes in before I felt a wave of bloggy inspiration (and freaked-out perspiration). Willow remained indifferent.
The McSpuds were superb (though sadly absent, I think, on DVD Volume 1). They were, as I recall, only barely animated. Fixed rictus grins and sideways moving bulgy eyes. It had a regional Quinsworths glamour that was hard to forget.
Shadow, Glad to help spread the nightmare across the Irish sea. As suggested, it wasn’t only its oppressive colour scheme that was suggestive of poo(h). It’s long-running “character stuck in a doorway” saga was a pretty straight steal from AA Milne.
John, Forgot the tree?! Scoff! I most certainly did not. Charlie Crann was his name and he was a wise and ancient nature spirit voiced by Ould Mr Brennan. He didn’t make the cut as he’s nowhere to be found on the DVD. Besides, there’s only so much freakiness readers can take.
Every day now, all over Ireland, parents in their early thirties are being disappointed by their children’s remaining steadfastly unimpressed by Bosco. “Kids today…” they grumble, but beneath lurks a terrible fear: Maybe it’s not a question of a finicky new generation not knowing televisual quality when they see it. Maybe, just maybe, Bosco was never that good. Maybe it was shit.
The notion is too horrible to contemplate. The DVD goes back on. The child is strapped to a chair and told there will be no food today, or any day, if he does not watch it all the way through. Watch it and like it.
I can’t help thinking that there should have been a scene with Charlton Heston screaming ‘Damn you! Damn you all to Hell!!!’ at the little plasticine thingies.
Fergal, It’s weird, but I never really considered Bosco a sacred text of my own childhood (i.e. one I’d inflict on my own children in an atmosphere of misty-eyed reverence).
I have a clear memory of the very first episode being broadcast and the excitement it generated, Even still, I seem to remember feeling too old for it even then. Feeling that it was aimed less at me and more at my younger (easier to please) siblings. This seems odd given that (if Wikipedia’s dates are correct) I was only 4 or 5 when it started. Curious stuff. Perhaps I was just madly precocious. Except I wasn’t…
Shadow, Sadly Chuck Heston’s robust, individualistic politics didn’t sit entirely comfortably with the Bosco philosophy of collective caring and sharing.
Actually, Wikipedia’s Bosco page seems stuffed with highly dubious “facts”. Country of origin? Ireland/United Kingdom. Eh? Original channel? RTE 2/BBC. Eh (again)? Number of episodes? At least 300. I’m certain that’s miles off. I thought the stock of episodes was quite small but endlessly repeated (as was the case with many shows of the era). Just shows how shitty the archiving of popular culture is in this country that such a simple fact is even in dispute.
Fergal – have you been spying in my sitting room?
I still love Bosco. There, I’ve said it. Ye can keep your Bob the Builders and Peppa Pigs – my heart will always belong to Marian & Peter and their brightly coloured, very tight skinny jeans.
Embarr, As far as Marian went, I was precocious. I dearly wanted to get naked with her.
Oh dear lord. I was an avid Bosco fan back in the day but I had completely erased this hellscape from my memory… What were the names of those plasticine guys who recited tongue-twisters while their necks got ever more elongated?
Maybe it’s a mercy that we still had a black-and-white TV until 1989…
Ms. Avery, The “plasticine guys who recited tongue-twisters” were, believe it or believe it not called – “The Tongue-Twisters”. After their necks reached maximum elongation they’d let out a sated orgasmic sigh before their heads returned to starting positions.
Not suggesting there was anything suggestive about it…
The Tongue Twister Twins were like some mutant vaudeville act from hell, there was a piercing Ray Manzarek organ piping in the background as they took the greasy stage and performed their ghastly act. They’d breath in and their necks would lengthen and their voices get higher pitched…I still get the chills just thinking about it. This has been a terrifying trip down memory lane for me, thanks for nothing Fústar et al!
I’ll bet you were one of those jammy gits that HAD some pipe cleaners.
I always despised that show and gave a cheer when that beardy fella (Peter?) got his head blown off in “Patriot Games”.If it wasn’t such an awful film I’d watch that scene again and again.
Yes. I have Bosco issues.
Hangar Queen, it was Jonathan who lost his head in Patriot Games: but not before he did a nimble little number in black briefs, a number that has scarred me so deeply that I really can not allow myself to watch the film again. The film is horse pooh but that scene makes it very, very dangerous and destabilising.
I seem to remember Fústar did a ‘where are they now’ piece about the former Bosco inmates some years ago. Perhaps you can refresh my memory Fústar, was it Jonathan who pranced in pants before meeting a sticky end in some ye-olde teach tabhairne (that for some bizarre reason provided lodgings as well….in Ireland??) in that film? I saw it once, I remember more than I should but some images just won’t go away. I too have Bosco issues!
Pingback: Upside-Down and Downside-Up, Mirror Magic Means Much Mixing - Fustar - Recycling Cultural Waste Since 2005
Hangar, No. I was one of the poor bastards who had to make do with bendy straws.
Cnuimh, It was indeed beardy Jonathan – though I never (as far as I can recall) penned a “Where are they now?” piece on the Bosco posse. Might you be thinking of this?
http://www.fustar.info/2007/01/12/206/
Anyway…here’s a “treat” for you. Freshly banged out.
http://www.fustar.info/2009/08/04/upside-down-and-downside-up-mirror-magic-means-much-mixing/
Bosco started in September 1979 not 1978. Wikipedia is incorrect. I am pretty sure they made more than 250 episodes. Quinfilms history page bears this out http://www.davidquin.ie/quinfilms.html
Paul
@Paul – Thanks for that. Think you’re right RE: the number of episodes. Oh, and nice blog! Added to links.
The strange mala creations were clearly inferior to the more minimalist, focussed and character driven Morph featured on Tony Harts art show. This sad state of affa
The sad fact is that Bosco very much would drive an impressionable toddler into a state of intense melancholy. Even dull, insensitive children had to face the awful truth when measuring the relative merits of childrens entertainment produced by a then stagnant Ireland and a pretty piss poor UK that could still however produce something as exotic as Floella Benjamin. Playschool had 3 different shaped windows and songs that finished in a reasonable time. In an unimaginative attempt to ape our overseas cousins Bosco had a magic door through which we were shown miserable children on a boring holiday and terrible endlessly repeated “songs” which tested even a childs love of repetition.
The people responsible for Bosco should hang their heads in shame.
BTW, anyone else think Forty Coats went down the toilet after only a couple of episodes…