CBeebies Land is a small dystopia inside Alton Towers, a theme park where people sometimes get their legs chopped off by a rollercoaster called The Smiler. There is a gothic mansion by Augustus Pugin, the Nietzsche of cushions, which has been allowed to fall into ruin, because it is less important than the Runaway Mine Train and a ‘ride’ covered in plastic frogs. It broods like Manderley; around it, people play with water cannon and eat sugar until their eyes are dead. I was going to suggest that parliament convene at Alton Towers while the Palace of Westminster is repaired, so they could feel the Pugin; but they might be maimed by The Smiler.
CBeebies Land is populated by a range of bouncing adult ‘characters’, who I fear are depressed, and fictional characters who are either as fiercely conservative as the butler in Downton Abbey — Postman Pat, who looks like Tam Dalyell, or David Cameron, who looks like Igglepiggle — or primary-coloured blobs that scream and fall over, and are therefore more likeable.
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