Fair Ground!

This was the title of the 1982/3 series of the legendary BBC 2 schools programme 'Look And Read', whose 'drama' was centred around a travelling fair and the Watson family who owned the field where the fair was sited every year.

Each episode was split into three distinct 'sections', with the exception of the first episode of each series of 'LAR', the first section was a recap of highlights from the third 'drama' section of the previous episode, often quoted verbally as 'The story so far', the second (middle) section consisted of the key character 'Wordy' and a special human 'host' for each series with the timeless literacy-related songs from Bill The Bricky, Dog Detective, and many other characters, plus general discussions pertaining to each series between Wordy and the human 'host', then followed by the third section consisting of the main drama.

I know there were others in the series ('The Boy From Space', Dark Towers', 'Badger Girl', etc) that were all great, but 'Fair Ground!' happens to be my all time favourite, with some very well- thought-out storylines with a kind of social conscience, especially where Ozzy Watson, the kid character (and son of Mrs Watson who owned both the corner shop and the site that the fair occupied each year) became a hero for sussing out a lot of what went wrong in the area that week, after not initially being believed by his mom and Bert, the showman in charge of the fair, both of whom originally seemed rather blasé about the chaos that was starting to unfold in the area.