Sarah & Duck
Season 3, Episode 37: "The Haberdasher" (7 minutes)
UK: Karrot Entertainment
CBeebies, Wednesday 22 November, 17:10
Sarah & Duck is one of those things that is targeted at children but can be enjoyed by anyone. In fact, I went to a talk by the creator, Sarah Gomes, the other day, and she said that she initially envisioned it to be for adults, and it only became a children's show later down the line.
The show takes scenarios that a real child might encounter, but sets them in a strange world full of surreal characters. Everything is made more wondrous and quirky...perhaps the way that the world might seem through the eyes of a curious child.
Everyday tasks turned into adventure
In this episode, Sarah is about to leave the house but isn't able to fasten her coat because the zip pull breaks off. So she visits her neighbour the Scarf Lady* (an old lady who loves knitting), who tries to knit a replacement, but it is huge and far too heavy. The Scarf Lady explains that they will have to visit the haberdashery to get a new zip.
The haberdashery turns out to be a a very strange place, full of steampunk-style machinery and seemingly completely automatic. You simply tell the computer what you want, and it will appear from a hatch in the floor. The Scarf Lady warns Sarah that you have to tell the computer exactly what you are looking for.
Sarah tells the computer that she needs "a zip bit". The Scarf Lady tells her that the proper name is a zip pull, but it's too late: Sarah is sent through a hatch in the floor and lands into a vat full of zip pieces (the computer didn't understand what she wanted, so it gave her all of the pieces it had).
Sarah wanders through the underground factory, marveling at all the strange machinery, until she finds the part that she needs. She finds a robot worker, asks it for the "zip bit," but quickly corrects herself and asks for the "red zip pull" before she gets more pieces dumped on her! Sarah then returns upstairs to the Scarf Lady, who is able to repair her zip at last.
But is it educational?
For the most part, this is just a fun little adventure, but there is some educational component to it. Notably, it teaches some new vocabulary without being explicit and boring about it. For example, Sarah clearly doesn't know the word "haberdasher" (she asks "habberdabber?") But instead of explaining what the word means, the Scarf Lady just takes her, so we can see for ourselves that it is a shop full of fabrics, wool, threads, etc. Her only verbal comment is "it's where I bought my wool baller and corer".
Likewise, when Sarah ends up in the pile of zip pieces, the narrator notes "it seems the haberdasher took your request a bit literally." Sarah doesn't understand the word "literally," so the narrator explains "you got exactly what you asked for". It's a sort of stealth teaching, which involves speaking to the young audience like adults, instead of dumbing down and explicitly explaining what words mean. I like it.
It's also notable that the narrator interacts directly with Sarah, acting as a sort of parental figure. He reassures Sarah when she is sad, checks that she hasn't hurt herself, and makes suggestions when she is confused. When Sarah responds to the narrator, she looks "down the lens" towards the viewer. I think this may help increase the young viewers' sympathy towards the main character, helping them to understand her emotions and learn how to interact socially with people.
And finally, Sarah provides some moral examples to the viewers. When she needs help, she goes and asks an adult for help. When she speaks to the robot, she says "excuse me," and when it gives her the new zip pull, she says "thank you".
Summary
All in all, this is an endearing, engaging and visually charming programme, providing high-quality entertainment to little ones. Although it's not educational in an academic way, it provides lots of examples of good behaviour and morality and is therefore has social education value. I wasn't able to pick any faults with this episode whatsoever. Which is very rare for me.
Available to watch online until 22 December 2017
(* Sarah Gomes noted that the design of the Scarf Lady had to be changed quite a lot. She was originally more realistically old, but she discovered that small children are often scared of old people, so had to de-age her. Only the grey hair remains as a sign of her age.)
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