What's the story? (Balamory)

Member Name: abbadabbado

Product:	Balamory
Date:	18/09/08 (192 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: my daughter loves it

Disadvantages: kids tv

If you have a child aged one and up, you will definitely have heard of Balamory. The programme is set in Tobemory in Scotland, and based on a fictional island called Balamory.

The basis of Balamory is set around a community which help each other out, and send out educational messages to the children who watch it. There are set characters you see in each episode, and sometimes you might see lots of them, other times only a couple of characters. All the characters are played by real people and are acting as real people which are refreshing to watch sometimes.

Each episode of Balamory will always start with Miss Hooley. Miss Hooley runs the islands nursery and looks after the children each day. The episode's story will always start here.
Each character always wears the same colour clothing, and lives in a corresponding coloured house. This gets the children who watch it to recognise the colours.
The whole of the community will have to help each other out during each episode and the character of the episode will visit many others to help them solve the problem they are trying to overcome.

There is some really dire and also some quite groovy music that is attached to this programme, and I do chuckle to myself when it's on. My daughter is transfixed during this 15 minute episode every morning, so they must be doing something right.
The characters included are
- PC Plum, the islands police man. Lives in the white house
- Josie Jump, the islands exercise freak. Lives in the Yellow house.
- Archie the island's inventor. Lives in the pink house.
- Spencer is the islands musician and artist. Lives in the orange house.
- Edie McCredie the island's bus driver. Lives in the blue house
- Miss Hooley the island's nursery teacher. Lives in the green house.
- Suzie Sweet the island's shop and cafe co-owner. Lives in the red house
- Penny Pocket also runs the shop and lives in the red house.

Balamory stands out against some other children's programs as I think it portrays a good range of diversity in each programme. You have colour, race, disability, age in each episode. This is between the characters and also the children that visit the nursery. If this subliminally gives my young daughter messages that not everyone has to have the same colour skin as her, or that not everyone has to speak the same language or walk on two feet like her then this is a good thing.

As I said this is one programme my daughter will watch without getting up and moving off to pay with her toys so well done to the creator Brian Jameson as he has captured an audience in small children.
Balamory was produced between 2002 - 2005, and is aired mostly on CBeebies.

Summary: a pre school tv show