'Teletubbies' to return with tablet tummies
You wouldn't think that technology would have infected the primary colored world of children's TV, but even the Teletubbies have been forced to move with the times. The forthcoming remake of the stoner-favorite show sees the amorphous blobs ditch their stomach-mounted televisions for "touchscreen devices." Naturally, in the real world, it's still a square of grey felt stitched onto the costume, but characters will now interact with this tech in a way that's familiar to kids.
Whereas you could keep the kids of 1998 entertained by dumping them in front of PBS, modern children are slightly more sophisticated. In fact, most of them either spend their days swiping back and forth across your smartphone's home screen, or have a kiddie-tablet of their very own. In fact, when you combine that with the embarrassment of age-appropriate TV shows on services like YouTube Kids and DirecTV Kids, Teletubbies seems almost archaic.
Apropos of nothing, Teletubbies is set in a post-apocalyptic paradise where a group of amorphous, sexless blobs eat a strange yellow liquid for sustenance. Living in a bunker, a computer monitors their every move while barking out oblique orders from a series of speakers that cover the landscape. Does anyone else think that there's more than a few similarities with the plot of Harlan Ellison's horrifying short story I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream? Now that I've worked that out, I think I need a lie down.
