You know you’re getting old when the people who made the TV programmes you liked as a kid start dying. So, farewell, Oliver Postgate, creator of Ivor the Engine and, of course, the immortal Bagpuss. I suppose those of us born in the mid-1970s (post-Clangers then) were the last for whom Postgate’s work was a central part of their childhood TV experience.I assume today’s kids would be entraced by the subtle, wry joys of Bagpuss but I’m not sure I’d want to test that thesis. From the Telegraph’s obituary:
The worlds constructed by Postgate and his long-time collaborator Peter Firmin were the products of a kindlier age, informed by Postgate’s own utopian longings and encapsulated in his mild, avuncular narration.
His programmes were simple and uncluttered, yet stimulating and not unsophisticated. They eschewed the frenetic matiness of later generations of children’s television, winning the trust of their audience instead by old-fashioned reliance on plot and characterisation and by an appeal to a child’s instinctive belief in magic.
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