If television is the idiot's lantern then the subjective opinions of someone unqualified to write about television must surely be the idiot's lectern.

Nina and the Neurons

CBeebies

One of the many strange and exciting joys of having a two year old niece to look after from time to time is finding out what children’s telly is like these days. When I was small it was a reasonably civilised affair with a few American cartoons, some noisy game shows and of course Blue Peter. For even smaller people there was Play Bus – a series based around the endless possibilities of playing and buses. I even vaguely remember a baffling and almost impenetrably Welsh cartoon called (if I’m not mistaken) Will Kwak Kwak.

Actually I was slightly mistaken – it’s Wil Cwac Cwac according to Wikipedia and, since I’m not one of those dreadfully boring internet snobs who think that reading Wikipedia is like wearing a shell suit and spitting in the street, I’ll take their word for it.

So that was then, what of now? Saturday afternoons with my little Banana bring us such delights as "Nina and the Neurons" – a Scottish series in which a polymath scientist educates small Scottish children. First things first – the woman playing Nina is not unattractive. She has one of those soft Scottish accents you can almost bathe in and a level of productive enthusiasm which makes you think she could go all night and then make you a really good breakfast the next morning.

Assisting Nina in her science quest are her neurons. The average human brain has one hundred billion neurons. The brain of the fruit fly has three hundred thousand and the nematode worm – bless it – has a mere three hundred and two. Nina – who drives a van on public roads – has five. Which not only makes her barely as sentient as her shoes, it surely qualifies her for a better paying job in grown-up telly.

It’s not all doom and gloom for Nina – she may only have five neurons but they are big, bright, CGI neurons which can talk. She has one neuron for each of the five senses. She’s obviously not seen that episode of QI where Sir Stephen Fry (any day now…) explains that we have far more than five senses and anyone who thinks otherwise can hang their head in shame and surrender at least ten points.

After giving her small collection of Scottish children a little science demo (nothing too complicated – it’s usually making a periscope or producing foamy gunge out of household substances) she gets a call on her video phone. It’s a child with a burning question for Nina. The last one I saw asked which of the five senses is most useful when trying to get to the centre of a maze. I know – that is not the first question I would ask an attractive Scottish polymath scientist with cute bunches and boundless energy.

Nina gets in her van and drives to a maze where the questioner and a bunch of his or her friends’n’family are waiting. Nina splits them into groups and tells each group to only use one sense as they try to navigate through the maze. She doesn’t apply strict scientific experimental conditions and blindfold four of the groups or plug the ears of all those not using their sense of hearing. It’s basically just an excuse for some voice overs and a few shots of people not managing to find their way through a maze. As a genuine contest of skill it is somewhere below a WWE match on the authenticity scale and we begin to smell a rat when Nina – transplanted to the centre of the maze because she has a map – starts up a barbeque.

Because it is children’s television and certain life affirming messages have to be projected at all times, each of the five parties gets to the centre of the maze at exactly the same time. So screw anyone in Malaysia who had a bet on the outcome. The folks enjoy their barbeque and Nina gleefully explained that the answer to the question about which is the best sense to get to the centre of a maze is "All of them!" Which fits nicely into the ethos that every child should get a gold medal at sports day, everyone’s attempts at spelling are equally valid and that sitting exams is just the tiresome formality which must be gone through before awarding everyone a pass.

I’m not sure what Nina and the Neurons is meant to teach children. It is certainly bright and colourful but the science is preposterous, the questions are bizarre and irrelevant, the morals are namby pamby and the entertainment value is almost nil. If you don’t fancy Nina you’re left with something slow and boring which every so often goes inside Nina’s head and looks disturbingly like one of those eBay commercials we’re subjected to in the build up to Christmas.

Maybe I only see bad episodes. The maze one is the only one to have stuck because it is participle absurd. Children will not grow up finer people for believing that your sense of smell is vital for finding your way to the centre of a maze. And I can’t even think what they did to make your taste buds feel important. If I was a child and if I could pay attention to this and if I could then make myself care, I think I’d go away remembering that all the saps who played by the rules were losers and the way to get to the centre of a maze quickly is to use a map (i.e. cheat). Finally, something useful on CBeebies.

Saturday afternoon also seems to be the time when CBeebies is signed for the deaf. Watching the signers is far more entertaining than anything Nina and co are doing. It’s like mime but good. They get carried away and start acting out little bits of the story. They’re so infectiously happy to be there that you can’t help but be carried along on a wave of silent optimism. But they even manage to go one better than having the programmes signed – Mr Tumble is a slapstick buffoon who pratfalls his way through all manner of humorous situations and does so while signing in real time. He’ll walk along, signing that he is walking along, slip on a banana skin, sign that he has slipped on a banana skin while in mid-air and land on his clown’s arse in time to sign that he’s landed on his clown’s arse. Give the man a BAFTA. I don’t care in what category – he just deserves a BAFTA. Now.

And – AND – Postman Pat is still going strong. Did you know he has a surname? Pat Clifton. I didn’t know that until someone said it came up in a pub quiz and I looked it up online. Same old Pat, same old Jess, same old little red van. He’s still sorting out all of Greendale’s problems while still getting the mail delivered on time. I bet he has more than five neurons – he’d need them with his workload.

He's even got a wife and son. Which means Postman Pat has had sex. I didn't need to know that.