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Play School was a British children’s television series produced by the BBC which ran from 21 April 1964 until 11 March 1988. It was created by Joy Whitby and was aimed at preschool children. The programme spawned numerous spin-offs in Britain and other countries and involved many presenters and musicians during its run. Despite a revamp in 1983, Play School maintained the same basic formula throughout its 24-year history, but changes to the BBC’s children’s output led to the programme’s cancellation in 1988, when it was replaced by Playbus, which soon became Playdays. BBC2 and received holiday runs on BBC1 in Summer 1964 and 1965, later acquiring a mid-afternoon BBC1 repeat as the opening programme of BBC1’s teatime children’s schedule.
The morning showing was transferred to BBC1 in September 1983 when BBC Schools programming transferred to BBC2. When the BBC scrapped the afternoon edition of Play School in April 1985, to make way for a variety of children’s programmes in the afternoon, a Sunday morning compilation was launched called Hello Again! There were several opening sequences for Play School during its run, the first being “Here’s a house, here’s a door. It’s” In this version blinds opened on the windows as the numbers were spoken. The blinds were no longer featured towards the end of the 1970s and the word “windows” was added before “1 2 3 4”. The final opening sequence involved a multicoloured house with no apparent windows. This was used from 1983 until the end of the programme.
The opening legend then became “Get ready. Unlike earlier BBC programmes aimed at preschool children such as Watch with Mother, Play School featured real presenters who spoke directly to their audience. A triangular window was added in 1983. At the beginning of the 1983 revamp, the windows were now referred to as “shapes” as in “‘let’s have a look through one of the shapes” After the shapes were moved to a spinning disc, the programme went back to using windows which resembled those used in the late 70s, albeit with the addition of the triangular window. Whenever they were shown now, only the window that the show was using for the day would be on the set.
Each episode would also include a short story read from a book, introduced by checking the time on a clock. Normally the clock would show either an hour or a half hour and the young viewers were asked, “Can you tell what time the clock says today? Both the clock and the three window option live on in the children’s programme Tikkabilla, which borrows much from Play School, while a similar choice of portal into a film clip was provided by the abdomen-mounted video displays in the children’s show Teletubbies. Most of the programmes were studio-based, but there were a number of outside broadcasts at a variety of locations, such as zoos, seasides, central London, churches, schools and farms. There would also be songs, games, poems and stories, as well as regular painting and craft activities.
