Sarah & Duck has been on constantly at my house for… oh, ten years? Fifteen? A hundred and twelve? How old am I? What year is this? What century? Did we elect a plant President yet? A real long damn time.
Sarah & Duck’s theme song plays four times an episode, since each episode is broken into two little mini-episodes and we get the theme song played at the beginning and the end of each, meaning that in the middle you get to hear it two times in a row. Picture these words chanted in a charming middle-aged British accent over gentle guitar music:
Sarah and duck. (quack!)
Sarah and duck. (quack!)
Sarah and duck. (quack!)
Sarahandduck. (quack.)
Quack isn’t actually a word; that’d be Duck quacking. The only difference is the cadence; the fourth Sarah and duck is faster than the other three.
So, yeah. Sarah & Duck. Here they are. Try to guess which one is which:
The artwork might remind you of South Park. I doubt that’s intentional, as it would be impossible for any animated program to be farther from South Park in tone and execution as Sarah & Duck. Sarah is a girl. Duck is a duck. They’re both very, very, very British. There’s also a nameless, disembodied narrator, who not only narrates but talks to both of the characters. They talk back. He’s very British too, and says things like well done and have a go and Tuesday and Bobber-clobber, which is probably an ethnic slur, all the time.
Sarah appears to have no parents, but she lives in a nice house with Duck, who has his own bedroom. Adults are occasionally present as side characters, and then there’s the narrator, but he doesn’t have a body so he doesn’t really count. Other things talk, but not all of them. Duck only quacks. This is Plate Girl:
I want it noted for the record that I didn’t know that picture had a caption until uploading it, and I’m keeping it there, because that’s the kind of show this is. Plate Girl has a plate with her all the time. The plate doesn’t talk. There was an episode where she lost it in the fog, and she was very sad, and eventually Sarah figured out that she accidentally set it on top of a giant tortoise who happened to be walking by when Plate Girl set her plate down so that she could open the gate into Sarah’s “garden,” which is British for “front yard.” I have not seen this “lost plates” episode yet, somehow.
This is Scarf Lady, who seems mis-named:
You will note that Scarf Lady’s handbag has a face, and talks, and generally seems to not actually like Scarf Lady very much, which I would think would be a more salient characteristic than her everpresent scarf. But no, she’s not Talking Handbag Lady. She’s also not Keeps a Cthulhoid Sentient Pile of Immobile Yarn Captive in Her Horrifying Knitting Abbatoir Lady, but she does that too:
Oh, and there are talking shallots in Sarah’s garden. By which I mean an American garden-garden, not a British lawn-garden. The shallots are the only thing growing in the garden, and the British pronunciation of “shallots” is different enough from American pronunciation that it took forever for me to figure out what he was saying. They talk too:
Anyway, Sarah has adventures, and they’re whimsical and British– did I mention this show was British?– and fun, and occasionally slightly entertaining, and the way she has to sound out long words can be really cute at times, and the show’s harmless and sweet and actually not very annoying at all.
Until the Pink Episode. Which starts off typically, but then goes off the rails completely for a moment, in a way that will have you questioning your own sanity and the show’s entire premise. Watch this to the 1:49 mark and then pause it:
You see what I mean here? The weird look on Duck’s face, the creepy bells, the sudden horrified silence of the narrator as the show implies that Sarah is about to carve her own heart out to make sure she’s as pink on the inside as she is on the outside? It’s the most WTF moment of any kids’ TV show I’ve ever seen.
The show is, uh, not normally like that. But that’s what got it reviewed. Because it ain’t a kids’ show until somebody’s threatening to disembowel themselves, right?
Two thumbs up, but one of them is severed.
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