11:39am Monday 15th March 2010
Big Babies (CBBC, 5.45pm ); Missing (BBC1, 2.15pm); Missing Live (BBC1, 9.15am)
COMEDIANS Spencer Jones and Martin Collins are Big Babies. A new CBBC series puts their heads on the bodies of ten-month-old babies.
Whether they’re sitting on the sofa watching TV or taking a trip to the park or to granny’s, babies Rocco and Brooks express their wide-eyed bewilderment and basic knowledge to each other.
They’re interrupted only by Brooks’ mum who, oblivious to their baby chatter, scoops them up for a change of nappy or to put them in the buggy for a day out.
Sharon Horgan voices Mum, whom you never actually see in full. “It’s like Tom and Jerry all over again,” she says.
“I would say 95 per cent of the adults in it you don’t see; you might catch the odd glimpse here and there, but generally, the adults aren’t part of this world at all. It helps really because, when you’ve got men with beards playing babies, you want to avoid seeing any actual adults – to hold on to whatever tenuous reality you can.”
Horgan, who wrote and starred in the hit series about single life, Pulling, is also a consultant on the show, having introduced Jones and the show’s director, John Riche, to the BBC after discovering and loving their comedy sketches.
The mother of two young children is partly a script consultant and partly a consultant mum.
“I watched it with my six-year-old so I was able to say, ‘look, my daughter thinks this bit is absolutely hilarious, whereas this bit frightened her’. But she was so excited every time I brought a new episode home and that’s kind of how I knew it was going to be a hit because it’s got this sixyear- old’s seal of approval,” she says.
As a mum, Sharon’s also able to relate to the strange world of Rocco and Brooks.
“We always wonder what’s going on in their heads, don’t we? Ridiculous as it sounds, you believe that Jones and Collins are babies, you believe that they have these ridiculous thoughts and opinions.
“It’s hard to capture just how mental babies really are and, in a way, this kind of does. It’s complete nonsense, but you think, actually, a baby might think like that, or a baby might see the world in that way.”
Other surreal additions to the world of Big Babies include a regiment of real toys which, with the help of some puppetry and special effects, come to life once the babies have gone to bed.
There’s also a rapping baby called The Gonch, who rides around in a souped-up buggy with leopard-print lining and, once in a while, the characters break into song.
It’s hard to imagine the woman who brought us the dysfunctional characters, foul language and black comedy of Pulling sitting on the sofa in front of kids’ TV, but Horgan, who is currently working on three new sitcoms, says she tries not to let being a mum affect her tastes or habits.
“Having kids turns everything on its head, so you need to retain that thing that made you in the first place. In a way, I made a huge effort not to change,”she says.
“At the same time, you see things with completely different eyes. You’re much more worried about the world, but I don’t know if it’s affected my work. I still write about the same things, I still see the world in a certain way.
“I think my kids are just light relief from my work in a way. It’s still pretty dark.
“I’m just much more tired – that’s the main change.”
MISSING proved a hit when first shown last year. prompting the BBC to commission twice as many new dramas. Pauline Quirke returns as Detective Sergeant Mary Jan Croft, MJ for short, in the drama series Missing, while Missing Live investigates real-life cases of missing people.
In Missing, MJ and her team investigate the disappearance of a six-year-old girl who may have been kidnapped by her father.
There’ll be more domestic matters to deal with, too, when MJ and her sister, Ellen, are reunited with their long-lost and totally unreliable dad Jack (played by Roy Hudd), who certainly doesn’t seem to be the reformed character he claims he is.
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