Before I jabbed at it on iPlayer out of sheer curiosity I had never heard of CBBC’s Strange Hill High.
Nor had anyone else I knew. Which makes sense because we’re adults and are apparently meant to be watching Melvyn Bragg or Pathé newsreels, not the neon sugar fun of shows aired at four in the afternoon.
But we’re missing out. Without a trace of hyperbole, Strange Hill High is one of the best UK kids’ shows CBBC has ever shown. Ever.
It follows three pupils – wise-cracking Mitchell, studious Becky, and nerdy Templeton – as they uncover bonkers mysteries, fight odd monsters, and dodge odder teachers. But that description tells you nothing. There’s no need for homework. All you need to know is it’s Grange Hill meets The X-Files. It’s The Mighty Boosh at Springfield Elementary. It’s not just, y’know, for kids.
With Series 2 just finished and Series 1 now out on DVD (and a Christmas special later this year), here’s five reasons why you, as a fully-grown adult with bills to pay and everything, should be watching Strange Hill High…
It’s actually funny. Really funny…
Really really funny. That’s because its showrunner is Josh Weinstein, a man credited with writing some of the best episodes of The Simpsons. ‘Who Shot Mr Burns?’, ‘Bart vs Australia’, ‘Two Bad Neighbors’… the ones you’d watch while eating your tea and then quote to friends at school the next day.
Weinstein’s influence is probably why Strange Hill High feels a lot like Bart and Lisa Simpson and Martin Prince unravelling oddities, and why the show has that early Simpsons high gag-count about it, with a blend of childish fun and sharp humour.
That wit is not all Weinstein’s however. There’s a gang of writers making sure that each episode is a pop-culture horror/sci-fi deconstruction for the YouTube generation, grafted onto classroom anxieties. Being John Malkovich, The Wicker Man, Little Shop of Horrors, King Kong and Marvel’s Avengers are all taken and twisted to fit inside the school corridors, and thanks to the writing not once does a pastiche feel clumsy.
It looks terrific…
Move aside, ‘Supermarionation’, Strange Hill High is comin’ atcha eye with ‘Hypervynorama’, an ingenious mix of Japanese vinyl toy design, puppetry, and CGI.
What at first sounds like a Gerry Anderson nightmare is actually startlingly traditional, while being modern and innovative enough to withstand being seen in the same vicinity as an iPhone.
It’s like Tom Baker’s Tales of Aesop, but for children who know how to work a computer. That’s all of them nowadays, but was very few back when Tales of Aesop was on. Trust me.
…and it sounds terrific too!
Behind the ‘Hypervynorama’ there’s a really good voice cast. Doc Brown (he of Law & Order UK rather than Back to the Future), The IT Crowd‘s Richard Ayoade, and Emma Kennedy (who also writes for the show and who you may remember winning Celebrity MasterChef once with a piece of turbot) all imbue the jittery puppetry with extra cartoonish energy.
The music is Converse-tappingly tuneful too. Once you’ve heard the ‘Ye Olde Righteousness League’ theme song featured in Series 2’s ‘The MCDXX Men’ you can never un-hear it.
It treats kids watching it like adults…
…and treats the adults watching it like kids. There’s a bar of humorous reference that’s set and you can either limbo under it or vault over it, depending on how culturally limber you are.
Not that that’s anything new. It’s just that – unlike a substitute teacher on their first day – Strange Hill High never feels like it’s trying hard to make fun.
Monsters!
It lives up to the Strange part. Across two series there’s an array of monsters and odd-bods that would put Scooby-Doo and The Mighty Boosh to shame.
Highlights include a deranged Tooth Fairy (Caroline Aherne) who feeds people sugar and collects their rotten teeth in order to build himself a dental xylophone; an Aussie PE instructor birthed by a megalomaniacal plant; and a Were-Teacher who causes Mitchell to transform into a substitute teacher whenever the school bell rings.
And that’s why you need to switch over from Escape to the Country and give Strange Hill High a go.