Review of Kids Of Degrassi Street

Introduction

I`m not sure if this ever aired here in the UK. It`s a Canadian children`s TV show all shot on grainy 16mm - and interestingly, despite the low budget feel, actually spawned a whole franchise of `Degrassi` branded follow ups (`Degrassi Junior High`, `Degrassi High` and `Degrassi: The Next Generation`) some of which featured these infant characters during their adolescent years.

The first episode featured here (`Ida makes a movie` ) was actually a one off pilot shot in 1979, and the remaining four episodes on the disc feature the same cast but were filmed two years later. Featuring a few nine year old kids within spitting distance from the Degrassi grocery store, this series eventually comprised some 26 episodes that followed them through elementary school.

Like a less gritty `Grange Hill`, it was seen to deal with issues not typically covered in Children`s TV and these few short episodes seem to cover a variety of issues including bullying, lying, illness, broken homes and so on. But it`s all dealt with rather clumsily. "Ida, why are you so afraid of change?" "I just like things to stay the way they are, that`s all".

Here`s what you get on disc one:

IDA MAKES A MOVIE
Ida Lucas makes a movie about rubbish and enters it into a local film festival. It gets into the finals but the judges seem to think that it`s actually a film about war. She decides to come clean - and wins the festival anyway! (Truth always wins…)

COOKIE GOES TO THE HOSPITAL
Cookie, one of the core `gang` is taken to hospital with appendicitis. But Ida and Noel are scared of hospitals. Luckily a nurse saves the day, and even allows the young visitors to bring here favourire doll along. Aaah!

IRENE MOVES IN
Ida gets jealous when 8 year old Irene moves into the street and Cookie becomes her friend. Then the gang believes that there is a `big foot` loose in the city and Ida decides she could do with friends not enemies at a time like that!

NOEL BUYS A SUIT
Noel`s Dad has decided to re-marry and Noel doesn`t like all the changes this brings. However, he learns that his new stepmother has feelings too and he stops being difficult when they finally have a heart to heart.

LISA MAKES THE HEADLINES
Lisa`s newspaper just isn`t selling when suddenly she`s faced with a major scoop. Ida is robbed and it seems that Noel, her brother, may be the culprit.

Video

Oh dear. Just about as grim as it gets. Probably mastered on 16mm originally, this has probably been through the NTSC to PAL washer too - and it just looks awful. Still - maybe it will bring back warm and fuzzy memories for someone. Having never seen it air, it`s hard to tell just how bad the transfer is. Maybe it always looked this bad. It certainly has an amateurish, low budget air to it.

Audio

Not great though I`m guessing it never was. It`s all a bit `open mike`, though entirely in keeping with the visuals. Yuech!

Features

Two sentence episode synopsis for each of the five episodes, cunningly disguised as `apecial features`. Other than that - nowt.

Conclusion

This one`s purely for nostalgia freaks. Who else would put up with the relatively wooden acting, the positively pedestrian scripting, the clumsy cutting and the grainy footage and echoey audio? But why gripe about these things? They`re the very ingredients that will have Canadian thirty year olds cutting a path directly to their favourite DVD vendor and parting with hard-earned dough for this dull disc.
I think this may have aired in the UK too which might account for its optimistic release here.



Far too dated to have any appeal to children now, it`s aged pretty badly and these transfers look like poor NTSC to PAL conversions from bad video tapes which in turn have been mastered from grainy 16mm at best.

Unless you can`t live without it for nostalgic reasons, this is one to avoid!