Jakers!

In the process of once again revamping and recasting the ill-fated Goodnight Show, Sprout has imported a new batch of children's shows from the UK.

One of these is Jakers! The Adventures of Piggley Winks. We caught a snippet of this in a hotel in London when we visited a couple years ago, and I knew even then that, as British childrens' television programming, it was destined to wind up on public television here in America eventually when the Teletubbies jumped the shark. And now, that time has come.

Jakers! (an exclamation I must manage to work into my everyday speech more often) is about the now-elderly Piggley Winks, and his tendency to narrate the events of his Irish childhood to his grandkids in neat twenty-minute blocks. He spent his childhood in the company of a cow and a duck, who, much like himself, walked upright and spoke English with an Irish accent.

Okay, so far, so good. But then this anthropomorphic fun takes a turn towards the bizarre.

Piggley's best friend is a cow, Fernando Toro. Fernando is male, but referred to as a cow. His father is a male and a bull, who also stands upright and speaks English. But the Toro family also keeps cows, who act like real cows and moo and walk on four legs!

Piggley's family keeps sheep. The sheep, when out of Piggley's view, speak English and walk upright, living out their own subplots until Piggley arrives on the scene again, at which point they behave like regular sheep again. The sheep's leader, Wiley, is voiced by Mel Brooks, because he was available.

Of course, one good reason an Irish farm family in the 1950's would be keeping sheep would be for meat. So the pigs are likely slaughtering animals just as intelligent as they are, merely because the sheep don't want to reveal that they're really living secret lives of excitement while the pigs are out of sight. If you ask me, the sheep need to think things over a bit.

But my real concern in poor Fernando. While I applaud his liberation from traditional gender roles, I can't help but worry that the guy is seriously messed up as an adult by the whole cannibalism thing his family had going on back in the day. Shemale Fernando, a disappointment to his hypermasculine blacksmith father, is forced to chow down every night on potential members of his own family! How messed up is that?! Does he drink milk? Does he drink it from his mom, his slave-cows, or even himself?!

Piggley as a child was reasonably well-adjusted, and yet now spends his time exaggerating boring anecdotes until his grandkids try to put him in a home. What has become of poor Fernando fifty years out? Is he wearing the leather skins of his victims and carving up hookers in Whitechapel?

Run, Piggley, run!