The Safest House of Present-Day Utopias

Fred Inglis (who, as it happens, wrote a biography of R.G. Collingwood, the opening chapters of which are quite beautiful, although I never read the rest) on "Toytown Utopias" in THE:

The safest house of present-day Utopias is, however, to be found in the 50-year-or-so history of television tales for five-year-olds. Trumpton and its sister villages, Chigley and Camberwick Green, all still easily available on DVD, plus the work of the recently deceased but always immortal Oliver Postgate and his utopian planet-home for The Clangers, these noble classics, together with Bob the Builder and Postman Pat, have for two generations taught their solemn audiences the lineaments of the good place...

These tales all corroborate the news from nowhere. Postgate's mouse-people on their distant planet do the same. Nature and industry combine in the harmonious provision of nurture (the Soup Dragon, the Iron Chicken), the denizens of the planet, speaking a language of melodious whistles perfectly endorsing Noam Chomsky's deep-structural theory of meaning, are impelled in all their doings only by kindness and curiosity. Their planet dances also, to the music of the spheres as played by little orchards of bell-bearing trees ... and hardly any lower in the nursery ratings, Bob the Builder and Postman Pat ply the politics of politeness with their unfailing kindness and consideration, the latter in the perfect landscape of the Yorkshire Dales.

In these places, and in their many descendants, the companion books often including their own DVD, the idea of Utopia lives staunchly on. Indeed, it is an agreeable and rational place for it to do so, for what are the stories we commend to our children and grandchildren for, if not to say implicitly and unplonkingly, "Here is how the world ought to be. We grown-ups haven't managed to make things come out like this. Remember these tales and see whether you can do better. One day, they will give you occasion for thinking the best possible thoughts.