The Wombles is based on a series of books from the 1960s about little creatures who live underground and recycle rubbish that they find in the surrounding areas for their homes and contraptions. Uncle Bulgaria is the patriarch of The Wombles and is joined by the likes of Madame Cholet, Bungo, and Orinoco. It wasn’t long before the books were turned into a stop motion TV show narrated by Bernard Cribbins (that’s right Doctor Who fans, Donna Noble’s Granddad).

The episodes were quite short, only 5 minutes long, but the theme tune is quite memorable due in no small part to the massive popularity of the show and it’s surprising impact on pop culture. Here is a full episode you can watch. Blink, and you’ll miss the one verse theme tune.

You can watch (what looks to be all their episodes) on the Wombles official youtube channel.

The show somehow hit the zeitgeist of the 70s as the movement towards recycling was just starting. It also seemed to hit Britain in the midst of a long period of novelty pop records. We spoke about TV show theme tunes entering the charts in the Minder article and The Wombles is no different. In fact, The Wombles went a step further and had a number of different songs in the charts. Here is arguably their biggest hit “Remember You’re a Womble”.

The footage in the following video isn’t great but it’s worth including for the bizarreness of it all. When Britain hosted the Eurovision in 1974, during the intermission for voting, they introduced The Wombles to the rest of Europe. I love it, if for no other reason than the poor presenter who had to translate The Wombles into French.

They haven’t gone away either. The Wombles played Glastonbury as recently as 2011. We’ll never be able to forget that we’re a Womble now…

The Golden Girls is a true classic of sitcom television. One of the few shows to be based solely on 4 women, and women of retirement age, it bucked a lot of trends on TV. None of the actors were particular stars, although Bea Arthur and Betty White were both well respected actors and comedians. To say that this show would be lucky to see the light of day now, in a industry obsessed with “young and sexy” talent, would be a major understatement.

Despite all that, or perhaps to spite it, The Golden Girls became a huge hit and it’s down to some great comic writing (that stands up to this day) and wonderful performances from the whole cast. In fact, the girls are so good on the show that whenever they have other performers guesting, you can see a real gulf in the quality between the stars and the guests. A lot of the men, who pop up from time to time, are often cringe-worthy in comparison.

The song’s lyrics sum up one of the core aspects of the show and that’s the security and love found within a solid friendship. This is something that women especially excell in more than men. I don’t think any kind of “bromance” really offers the same amount of support that women give to their best friends. And the whole premise of The Golden Girls is that at the end of the day the only people you can rely on are your friends and it nails this message in each episode to the point where I wish I was hanging out with these 60 year old women in Florida.

The song is one of those “must sing-a-long” sort of tunes. The melody is delightful and the lyrics are so easy that even after 20 odd years I’ve never forgotten them. In fact I’ve sung them to friends on many a drunken excursion.

If you haven’t revisited the show in years I advise you to do it. It holds up perfectly and can make some great day-off viewing.

I knew it was coming. I love OK Go. I have all their albums. I love the Muppets. We’ve gone through that before. OK Go doing the Muppet show song? I was excited.

The end result? Well, I’ll let you decide but I was a little underwhelmed. However, I did enjoy the some of the skit stuff toward the end and OK Go’s ability to make fun of their own music videos. What do you think?