Sunday 29 September 2019

Questioning Marmalade


Would you like some questions about the 1982 CITV sitcom Educating Marmalade (and its 1984 follow-up, Danger: Marmalade at Work), sorted by episode? No? Tough, that's what we're doing this week anyway.

General
On the DVD releases of both series, there is a modern-day Fremantle Media logo added to the end of each episode, after the Thames logo. On some of the episodes, the closing theme is still audible over the Fremantle logo, but on others it is not. So, er, any particular reason why?

Why wasn't Marmalade represented at all on CITV's Old Skool Weekend a few years ago? Was the 15-minute running length awkward?

Marmalade Atkins in Space
Are the opening captions a reference to the then-current Doctor Who title sequence, or is it a coincidental use of a starfield plus that font as "generic sci-fi one"?

Cringe Hill
In the last scene, Mrs McGonagall refers to the titular school as "Grange Hill". Is this a blooper, or a deliberate piece of leaning on the fourth wall?

How does Marmalade manage to forget she's filled all the chocolates with glue in the space of a few seconds?


Marmalade at Eton
With her hair done the way it is in this episode, doesn't Charlotte Coleman bear quite a strong resemblance to Maisie Williams?

Walkies
Is the picture fault near the start of this episode on the DVD the way it was originally broadcast, or a result of the tapes being damaged between then and the release?

Marmalade at St. Cecilia's
Why does the script seem to imply that Marmalade is going to remove the skeleton's dress to impersonate the Ghost of St. Cecilia's, and then she ends up dragging the whole thing around whilst hiding under the dress?

Marmalade in Venice
What possessed Andrew Davies to try and set an episode of his 15-minute children's comedy series on the canals of Venice?


Doesn't the episode nonetheless pretty much get away with it until the last minute or two, where the requirements of the script are just a bit too much for the special effects?

Nanny
When he wrote the opening scene of this episode (which features Marmalade repeatedly firing a machine-gun in the air), did Davies have any idea that he'd manage to get it broadcast at all?

Marmalade at the Albert Hall
Why is this episode's "Bad Girl Warning" after the title sequence instead of before it like every other episode (meaning this is the only episode across both series to not have a pre-titles sequence)?

Mrs Allgood's attempted suicide is a bit near the knuckle for a late afternoon children's series, isn't it?

Social Worker
Given D:MAW is in many ways even more surreal than Educating Marmalade, why was the talking nodding dog dropped? (The TND was, incidentally, presumably born out of the fact that Marmalade's companion in the original books was a talking donkey by the name of Rufus, which could not be practically realised for television.)

Marmalade Bravo
In this episode and the previous one, Social Worker, Prentis Hancock plays a policeman, and both episodes use the same police station set, so why are the two policemen played by Hancock apparently meant to be two different characters?

Private Marmalade
Is there an article to be written comparing Windsor Davies' military characters in this episode, It Ain't Half Hot Mum, and Terrahawks?

Shame
Did Andrew Davies write the songs for this? They're quite good, so if he did I'd expect him to try more songwriting elsewhere.

Given how early this role is in his career, was Danny John-Jules cast as a backing dancer for the musical sequences and then got some lines later?

Is it just a coincidence that Jim Carter had quite recently been in a production of Guys and Dolls before appearing in this episode?

Bonus question
What's this, then? Was Andrew Davies planning to write a new Marmalade book only a few years ago, but it got cancelled, possibly quite late in the day, for some reason? (There is also a second listing with the same release date and page count, for some reason.)

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