Skippy

Among my favourite features I have to include some Australian stuff that is very easily available in the UK in trimmed 4x3 versions. Sometime I will need to be looking for full widescreen versions of Looking For Alibrandi and My Mother Frank and Nightmaster, if they are available. These have quality.

This as an Australian television series from the 4x3 era and it is also among those that I rate.

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There was a late mid sixties TV series that started Skippy. I read it as in the genre of classic stories for boys, likely appreciated by many girls as well. I only have eight episodes, volume two of season one, region 2 set. Comments and background notes hint that fans tend to rate this Skippy as tops and I accept that it has an energy that is commonplace in the better series. Australia appears to have all episodes on DVD. Several collections with lots of disks.

This 1992 series as a follow on to that, taking the theme and extrapolating things to 25 years on. The genre is a story for girls and boys. I like both, but tend to prefer the 1992 despite its energy often being weaker for me, though that can come and go as if there is a barrier to appreciating it that occasionally disappears. Such a barrier might relate to me approaching this series in second childhood at an advanced age. One can easily be trapped out of being able to do most everything, many older ones are.

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Getting to know Lizzie McGuire series I rated it as more immediate than anything else I knew, not that I knew much at that time. Except that the heart of the ethics occasionally threw me. I had to rate Pete and Pete above this, not that it is goody goody either, and with season 2 and 3 including very early Michelle Trachtenberg it was not such a hardship to rate that as tops. I long for season 3 to appear on DVD even though I expect it to have problematic ethics, season 2 got wobbly so season 3 is likely to reflect that.

I found that The Worse Witch stable was close to these, among my favourites, that Zoey 101 was fun and one of my favourites even though I cannot justify why. Season one it was mostly how Nicole and Quinn looked cute and that is obviously no justification for anything. I like Quinn's dance in season one and cool style in season 2, She's The Man cannot compare.

The Adventures of Skippy (1992) has a down to earth feel that occasionally includes Australian and imported wildlife and The Adventures of Pete And Pete (1993 to 1995) has a musicality to its energy, they are different, but I am currently rating them as tops.

With me, Lizzie and TWW get more play as I have more episodes of these, less wear and tear on enjoyment. Now Skippy has a fair amount of disks and Zoey now has more available too. The new Zoey, season 2, I have is region 4 only and 4x3 sides trimmed, but it still is useful as it could be some time if at all before a proper version appears. Zoey season 3 is due soon, five disks, and could be region what?. My disks of Skippy appear to be region free, but that might just be my disks. Multi region hardware or software players are an essential basic with stuff such as these.

When I was young, I'm 41 now, Skippy was a very popular series. A couple of weeks ago we bought a DVD with 12 adventures of Skippy for our children and they really love it! (They are 6, 9 and 12). The stories are short (25 minutes) and always have a nice plot. Filming of course doesn't apply to todays standards but acting is quite okay. Each episode can be watched separately but there is a sequence. People introduced in earlier episodes do stay for a couple of episodes. Skippy, the kangaroo is of course always the great hero, but it's also fun to see how the people in the series interact with each-other. Really a series you can watch with the whole family.