Time for a blast from the past.
One of the Plinky prompts was to name my favorite TV shows as a kid. Well, I watched shows from three continents, so lots of you out there should recognize these.
We lived in the Netherlands until I was almost five, and we didn’t have TV. But I remember watching Klaas en Pimpernel (had to search to find the title; I only remembered Klaas) at my grandparents’ house occasionally.
In Australia, the first TV show I ever watched was Skippy the Bush Kangaroo. That was the bee’s knees! Because of watching Skippy, the first thing I ever wanted to be when I grew up was a helicopter pilot.
I also watched lots of cartoons like Bugs Bunny, Yogi Bear, the Flintstones, etc. and a children’s show called The Magic Circle with a woman called Mrs. Flowerpot. And apart from Skippy, I also watched Flipper, Lassie and Rin Tin Tin. But they couldn’t light a candle to Skippy, Skippy, Skippy the bush kangaroo. Skippy, Skippy, Skippy a friend ever true! Okay, I’m getting carried away.
My parents and I also watched the Carol Burnett Show, the Dick Van Dyke Show, I love Lucy, The Beverly Hillbillies and Mc Hale’s Navy. Those are the ones that stand out in my memory. Occasionally I got to watch a Tarzan movie with Johnny Weismuller. Exciting stuff!
Later on I watched Robin Hood with Richard Greene with my parents, and I have to say that, of all the shows I ever watched as a child, that one was and still is my all-time favorite. I found the complete episodes on DVD a year or two back, and I was in heaven watching them all again, and lots I hadn’t seen.
Back in the Netherlands we again didn’t have TV most of the time, but every now and then I got to see De Fabletjeskrant and Pipo de Clown, and later Q en Q. My brother watched Ti Ta Tovenaar, Beertje Colargol en Calimero. As a teenager I watched Monty Python’s Flying Circus and All in the Family with my parents.
But the memories of TV shows in the Netherlands after coming back are a lot less vivid than those of shows watched in Australia before the age of ten. I think everything is more magical when you’re younger.
Resident Alien -- Being Dutch in America 
Perfect timing on this post. I was trying to remember the name of All in the Family the other day. I could remember almost all of the characters, but not the program’s actual name.
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You’re welcome 😉
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Yes, television from our youth makes a big impression.
A lot of these shows you mention I have seen here (The Netherlands) too.
One of my favourites was also Daktari, do you remember that one?
Q en Q was one of a whole lot of childrens television series.
Some Dutch like Floris (you know Rutger Hauer), Pipo the Clown, Kunt u mij de weg naar Hamelen vertelen mijnheer, Swiebertje etc.
Some Belgian (Flemish) like Johan and the Alverman, Zwaard van Ardoaan (that one I don’t really remember) and there are more
Some French like Thierry la Fronde, Belle and Sebastian.
English like Ivanhoe and there are more that I don’t remember.
American like Daktari, Lassy, Rin Tin Tin, The Flintstones, Yogi Bear, Huckelberry Hound and many more.
Swedish like Pippi Langkous.
And all were, as is costom here Dutch subtitled.
Some children’s films and series for the little ones are synchornized in Dutch. Awful.
We didn’t know many of the languages spoken, in those series, but the fact was that you understood what it was about.
Living near the German border, in combination with the Limburgian dialect, without any effort we learned to understand German.
Memory Lane, sometimes nice to walk on!
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Oh ja, Pippi Langkous. And Samen op het Eiland Zeekraai. And Kunt u mij de weg naar Hamelen vertellen, meneer! Daar zou ik nooit meer aan gedacht hebben. En Daktari, met Clarence the cross-eyed lion. Oops, I’m forgetting to write in English! Oh well.
Yeah, I like subtitling better. It helps to recognize other languages if nothing else, and it often helps learn those languages, like German and English and French. From Pippi Longstocking I also picked up some Swedish., Like “Ik ben trut” which meant “I’m tired,” instead of “I’m a bitch,” which is what it meant in Dutch.
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