Everyone has their limits. Scratch that, every show has their limits, especially ones aimed at kids. Some have a hangup on cussing, some would be against showing murder outright, but this apparently isn't the case with every country.
When it comes to most countries, what they'd consider age appropriate would always vary. Maybe for the time, or through to this day. Apparently, in Australia, anything would go, and it's best exemplified in this 1990 gem Round the Twist.
Background
Round the Twist first debuted in 1990, airing in Australia on the 7 Network and in the UK on BBC One. It initially ended in 1992, with reruns airing on ABC (Australia's ABC) in 1993. From there the show got more traction, supposedly, and two more seasons were produced in 2000 and ended in 2001.
The show was backed and primarily produced through the Australian Children's Television Foundation. As I mentioned in one of my old Spotlight Australia posts, Australian shows were primarily backed through state funding and through government tax credit programs. It's the way over in the US, but with Australia, you're bound to find more funding credits there than anywhere else.
As this is a series with kids, recasts were increasingly common with every season, the show never had any mainstays. The longest any actor was able to stay on the show was three seasons, and only two had this luxury. The first was Esben Storm who played the main character's teacher. He got replaced by Ernie Gray in season 4. The next was Mark Mitchell who took the place of Frankie J. Holden after the first season for a recurring character.
In spite of its funding, it wasn't enough to support more ambitious episode ideas, one of which would've involved having animals in ice blocks. This show made due with what they had, and that's respectable enough.
But perhaps this show was better known for another thing. Know why I brought up standards in children's programing? This show defied program standards, but managed to come to air anyhow. To give you an idea, here's what was singled out.
Well damn. Though apparently Australia houses the Tasmania island, where inbreeding is a bit more common there than anywhere else. If you expect me to lose my shit over incest, I hate it in general, the only time I don't lose my mind is with the Loud House, they are surprisingly aware of the damages (also they pull the Lisa experiment card.)
Oddly enough, unlike MP4ORCE where it's still a bit of a mystery whether or not it ever aired on US television, apparently this aired on Fox Kids back in 1997. The fact that this show aired at all shows that anyone could be ready for anything.
Premise
The show primarily centers on the Twists, a family who moves into a lighthouse with various haunting-related oddities. Each episode centers on the kids in the family trying to solve an issue, normally after getting afflicted with a curse due to their involvement. Also, business dude who occasionally gets involved and tries to fuck up the kids' lives and tries to take down a lighthouse they're living at due to the supernatural there happening the most often. Think of Preston Northwest meets the mayor from Jaws, who shares the same surname as Dale Gribble.
The one episode I've seen so far is Without My Pants, where the kids discover the ghost of a dog who wants to locate the bones of his late owner. A close encounter causes one of the siblings, Pete, to add "without my pants" to the end of every sentence he says. This could've easily been bungled up if it was added into every scene with him, but it comes into play at the right times.
But this isn't the only curse in the episode. When the bones are in sight, per an incomplete skeleton, those in contact would start crying. This would be important, in that Pete saves himself from getting a failing grade as the "without my pants quip nearly got him in trouble. A clear and believable stake is wrought here, and the business guy merely wants to prep the town for a ceremony, he doesn't do much to hamper the kids aside from holding onto a boot that belongs to the dead guy.
The dialog is corny, but it's a good kind of corny, with clever quips following most scenes. The jokes flow very well, at least for me. I had no trouble making it to the end of the episode. Another interesting aspect is that it has good effects. We have stop motion effects on the skeleton, and while it's a bit hokey by today's standards, for something produced nearly thirty years ago, it looks cool. Even the stunts are cool, with a kid falling and tumbling down a bluff.
But how many proverbial birds to network standards did this particular episode pull? Aside from the indirect implications in the "without my pants" lines, we see, point blank, a dog turd. Also, we see Pete, literally, without his pants. The pants were a missing piece to the skeletal puzzle the kids were trying to solve, and Pete through his own pants to get the slip on a bunch of bullies who wanted to find the skeleton. Not to mention, we see a dog pissing on a bully, we don't see the dog, but we see the piss stream clear as day.
Though something tells me this is only the tip of the ice burg. For this episode at least, it isn't as gross as other shows and doesn't hold in on these aspects like the average John Kricfalusi cartoon. Based on framework, it reminds me a bit of an early version of the Goosebumps TV show, then again Freddy's Nightmares: A Nightmare on Elm Street gave me some of the same vibes. It's really down to the effects.
Overall
At its core, this show feels like an experiment to see what the creators could get away with. It's commendable that they were able to carry out four seasons with this adage. However, given how people lose their shit when it comes to gross-out or anything similar... I'm glad this show wasn't animated.
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