Rod's busy mending his bicycle, but the Pink Windmill Kids are intent on spending the day making kites. Grotbags and Croc, meanwhile, are of course keen to terrorise the lot of them from the safety of the Grotmobile. I believe this episode was originally broadcast on Wednesday, 10th November, 1982, and it features the songs Happy Talk (from the musical South Pacific, but a then-recent hit for Captain Sensible) and Let's Go Fly a Kite (from the film Mary Poppins).
The educational side of this era's Emu's World pops up again in this one, this time in the shape of a few of the Kids demonstrating their foreign language skills, plus a little talk about kites and their history. On that subject, by all accounts it was nigh on impossible to get the Kids to actually dance to that second song as they were far more preoccupied with playing around! Never mind - it all adds to the fun, and what a fun episode it is, despite Grotbags not really having any sort of ingenious plan other than to make a nuisance of herself. I also enjoyed the opening skit with just Rod and Emu being silly, and the foam magically appearing out of nowhere without the aid of special effects.
On a technical note, there are some outdoor pyrotechnics in this episode as Grotbags takes pot shots at the Kids running through a field - I'm trying to think of another example of when they did this, but I can't. Also, at around 6:23, there's a weird slow-motion shot inserted (presumably) over an edit in the middle of Francesca's bit. It's a real testament to how television used to be made back then: studio scenes were assembled on-the-fly, with only the footage selected at the time being recorded on a single tape. Nowadays, they'd record the direct feed from every camera as well as making a live edit as they went, and patch up anything iffy later; in 1982, if you hadn't got every shot you needed in that session, you had to pretty much make do with what you did get and use your own resourcefulness.
Many thanks to Jayne for lending me this tape.
(To the best of my knowledge, the contents of this video have never been available commercially anywhere in the world. Please also note that I don't monetise any of my uploads. Nevertheless, if you are a copyright holder and have an objection, please don't hesitate to contact me.)
3 мар 2018
