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Tuesday 22 May 2018

The Thing With Bing!




If you've got children of a certain age around the house, then you'll know about Bing!  If not, his work may have passed you by, particularly if you don't happen to be an avid fan of CBeebies.



Bing! (and he always comes with his own exclamation mark) is a charming black rabbit dressed in a colourful set of dungarees (which people my age would have called a romper suit in the dark ages).  He has a series of adventures with his friends Sula (an elephant) Pando (a panda) and Coco (another rabbit) which are all little morality tales in which Bing! learns a lesson about behaviour and social rules, which makes him a better rabbit.  So far, so good.

Where it gets a bit odd, in my opinion, is when we consider the carers of these animals.  None of them are the same species as their charges.  In fact, they're not any recognisable species at all.  For example, Flop, Bing's! carer, is an indeterminate brown thing that looks like a favourite toy that's been washed too many times.  Moreover, he, and all the other carers and 'adults' in these stories, is only half the size of his dependant, if that.

What bothers me is that these creatures, whatever they are, clearly run the world they inhabit.  They care for their giant animal offspring and also run the shop, the ice cream van and everything else in between.  What you don't see, ever, are the grown-up versions of the animals of which the children are infants, if you see what I mean.  Clearly Bing!, Sula and the rest have to grow up, at some point, so what happens to them then?  They can't take a position of any responsibility in their world because the small things with funny shapes have got those all sewn up. 


Is it me, or does this have all the hallmarks of a classic, if rather surreal, horror film?

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