As all parents know, you simply have to take an interest in the telly your kids love in order to hold your own in any conversation about them (with your kids, that is!)... and Fireman Sam quickly became my daughter's favourite character when she started watching him a couple of years ago.
Originally, I only got her the 'John Sparkes' series (he was the actor doing all the voices), but when I ran out of DVDs to buy for that series, I went back to John Alderton's ones, which are, of course, the originals and the best, in my 'umble.
This collection is of all the original John Alderton series. There's a lot to be said about the sense of humour in these early ones - there's a very 'human' element that seems to have been diluted over the following series, and is pretty much gone altogether in the new CGI ones, sadly. You will find scenes in amongst the old ones of Dilys getting a bit sozzled at Christmas time and Norman being embarrassed by her slightly drunken state (unthinkable now - who'd dare create a kids' show with a drunk single mother in it?!), of Penny making her first appearance and being evidently treated with some awkardness by the men of Pontypandy for being female (feminists would hit the roof over those ones)... Even the scenarios leading to the need to be rescued by Fireman Sam were all a bit more 'real' and dangerous: Trevor succumbs to poisonous gas after two chemicals get mixed together at a rubbish dump, Norman ends up trapped in a collapsed mine with no oxygen, Fireman Sam falls into a giant hole in the ground and is nearly crushed to death after Penny's cottage garden collapses (built above an old mine, it seems)... This is all what I mean about the 'human' element - they're just more interesting, to be honest, but perhaps I'm getting old and am being too nostalgic about the pre-politically correct days of my own childhood when the programme-makers could actually use this kind of content and get away with it...
Oh, and of course, it goes without saying that the animation - using REAL puppets that took REAL work and REAL time and REAL effort to generate, make the show so much better than the CGI ones (although I have to admit to having bought my daughter those ones too, but last of all and with a heavy heart...). I will also admit that these old ones are probably more interesting to us parents than our kids (compared to the CGI ones), but why shouldn't we get a kick out of it too when we spend so much time watching them and perfecting our Station Officer Steele impressions?...
