I have taken to watching episodes of Bellie and Whizz at Big School (RTÉ One, Tuesday) before going into The Irish Times (the epitome of “big school”).
This programme is very soothing and very sweet, at least when you get over the fact that in real life a badger (Bellie) and a bunny (Whizz) would not be friends at all and probably wouldn’t go to school.
In real life Bellie might, in fact, eat Whizz if hungry enough. (I believe this was the direction they went in the original pilot; it did not test well with audiences.)
I’m glad he didn’t. Watching this duo’s endearing antics has helped me make friends (by assisting people and taking an interest), calm my nervous system (by taking deep breaths) and listen to teacher (the editor of The Irish Times, Ruadhán Mac Cormaic).
All in all I feel very becalmed watching Bellie and Whizz at Big School and feel much better now about going into the office here on Tara Street in Dublin.
It did take me a while to realise this was a show for children and wasn’t actually produced by RTÉ’s business desk at the behest of a productivity-hungry State.
And then I got angry. Why do children get charming programmes like this, with cool fluffy puppets and real children to help them self-regulate, when adults just get the stupid news with boring old humans and Microsoft Excel and mortgages, things which don’t help us self-regulate at all?
It also made me think of other children’s TV shows that I think about a lot. Like …
Play School
This magazine show for small humans dominated British TV when I was a child. There were human characters on this show – the best being Floella Benjamin – but the main stars weren’t even puppets or cartoons. They were five inanimate toys who sat silently judging us, like a mini Politburo: Humpty (Lenin), Big Ted (Stalin), Little Ted (Trotsky), Hamble (Zinoviev) and Jemima (Kamenev).
[ Glenroe, Bosco, Mrs Brown’s Boys: The best and worst Irish TV shows ever madeOpens in new window ]
They stared at us with their dead eyes – doll’s eyes – coldly mapping out the parameters of their completely centralised economy and how we each individually fit within it. Kids today know nothing with their animated TV shows and ever-streaming phones. True pleasure is knowing that you might be subject to a toy-show trial at any moment for the good of the state. And, like all true believers, if that happens we will be thankful. For we have won the victory over ourselves. We love Big Ted.
Paw Patrol 
Paw Patrol: Is this the future Simon Harris wants?
I just don’t think it’s appropriate to privatise emergency services so that they’re run by puppies in customised vehicles. Where is the democratic oversight? How is it regulated? How do the puppies drive these little cars without opposable thumbs? Is their boss an actual child? I can’t believe that this is the future Simon Harris wants!
Bosco
Bosco: An ideologue at heart. Photograph: RTÉ
Any time I see this little legend’s name trending on social media I fear they have either died or been cancelled. Bosco is only a centrist when it comes to gender. Temperamentally this drama monarch swings wildly from go hiontach to uafásach. Politically, I can see them going either way. I can see them discovering the power of healing crystals and autocracy on the one hand or joining the flotilla to Palestine on the other.
An ideologue at heart, Bosco loves most of all to wonder at the mechanisation of a bottle factory on the other side of the Magic Door (they microdose) or to evoke the beauty of rural life via tales of that idealised peasant and hero of the revolution Gregory Gráinneog. They also live in a perfect minimalist cube. Say what you like about Bosco; that puppet had a vision and charisma, unlike …
The uncanny freaks of Cocomelon
Cocomelon: JJ and his friends in Cocomelon Lane. Photograph: Netflix
The garish Cocomelon engagement farm is designed to subsume unformed minds with frictionless gobbledook and turn them to overstimulated mush. On the other hand, you have a work Zoom to attend, and their granny isn’t picking them up for another hour.
Anything Goes
Aonghus McAnally co-presented Anything Goes on Saturday mornings on RTÉ
This is what passed for preteen anarchy in my heady youth. For some reason my strongest memory of this children’s magazine show, apart from the fact that I loved it, is an episode in which Aonghus McAnally, one of its presenters, apologised for saying “bum” instead of “bottom”. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I am a polite young man of 51 and my nephews, who know computers, are monsters. In 1980s Ireland, anything did not go.
Fortycoats
All I know is that one day you think of yourself as the teenage misfit Slightly Bonkers and the next you look in the mirror and the sartorially maximalist beard aficionado Fortycoats stares back at you. It’s enough to make me crash-land my flying sweet shop and retire altogether. Also, the Whirligig Witch? More like the Whirligig Wise Woman. It was, of course, a different time.
Press Gang
Bill and Steven Moffat’s drama about a school newspaper is probably at the root of my desire to get into journalism. Sadly, Press Gang also gave me unreasonable expectations about the type of resources I would have at my disposal. I know it was technically the late 1980s when the show started, but this children’s newspaper had an investigative-journalism budget that would put The Irish Times to shame. It’s probably no coincidence that it ran on ITV, far from the chilling, censorious gaze of Humpty and Big Ted.
Sesame Street = the New Deal 
Sesame Street: Oscar the Grouch and friend, circa 1985. Photograph: Children’s Television Workshop/Getty
In this dissertation I will explore why Sesame Street’s depiction of a functioning social contract for an autodidactic, musical, multicultural community of both men and muppets has its roots in President Franklin D Roosevelt’s work programmes in … (Editor’s note: Patrick, I’m cutting about 10,000 words here for space reasons.)
Peppa Pig
I’ve little to add to Peppa Pig discourse except to say that since the divorce Daddy Pig has become quite a big figure in the manosphere.
Bob the Builder versus Fireman Sam
It’s the can-do-it-ive entrepreneur (Bob) versus the bloated lackey of the nanny state (Sam), the former creating wealth and economic growth with his sentient talking machines, the latter stopping the accident-prone drones of Pontypandy from immolating themselves instead of letting nature take its course. (If that infant terrorist Norman Price wants to cause another fire, I say just leave him to it.) People wonder about the roots of political polarisation in modern life, but it’s clearly because of this duo. Yes, Bob the Builder or Fireman Sam, that’s the choice facing us all.
In the Night Garden
Your baby is tripping balls on being a baby (possibly the most potent drug there is), so what do you do? You stick it in front of the dreamy, twinkly In the Night Garden because we can’t give children sedatives or alcohol any more thanks to “laws”. In the Night Garden your unhinged sprog will encounter the adventures of a novelty-seeking being called Igglepiggle. He’s clearly meant to be Felt Jesus. It’s so soothing. So tasteful. So dreamlike. I watch it on my phone when I’m on work Zooms. Tell nobody.