… Ok so amazed might be  tad strong, but for a program designed for kids, I was quite impressed. For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of seeing it, Rastamouse is a tv show where a Jamacian band of mice called the Easy Crew, made up of protagonist Rastamouse and his sidekicks Scratchy and Zoomer, go around solving crimes for the leader of their town, President Wendsleydale. It keep things brief, it’s delightful. It’s far from challenging, and it does have the whole moral message that kid’s shows tend to have, but its fun, and all the mice sound, look and ooze coolness. They play guitar and skateboard everywhere, and have quite a catchy theme tune, despite sounding quite stereotypically Jamacian. NB. I’ve never been to Jamacia so it might be true, but I’m not sure if people actually say things like ‘wagwan’, ‘da’ rather than ‘the’ and ‘we be doing something’ instead of ‘we are’.

It’s a program I wish I’d had when I was young enough to watch it without having to justify myself to anyone. But like I said, my dad absolutely loves it, I gave him series one on DVD this Christmas and we had a Rastamouseathon (try saying that three times fast!). Each episode is only about 10-15 minutes and good tv for when you either want a bit of cheering up – the accents alone do it for me – or want something on to giggle to in the background, whilst knowing you’re too old for it. It’s like that cheeky indulgent moment where you buy a kinder egg surprise at the shops, a last minute whim, and get eager to find out what your toy is. It’s often horribly disappointing, which is where this comparison ends but its a fun, childish feeling nonetheless. You don’t plan to watch Rastamouse, you just do. And trust me, its nothing like the boring toys you find in kinder surprises (last time, I got a super secret spy… tape measure. I mean come on!) Half my blog posts are about recommending things, and this is no different – try it out, you might find the little mouse detectives as delightful as I do

PS. Two last little things: The voice for the main character is done by Radio 1 DJ Reggie Yates, which provides light amusement when hearing him on the radio talking about chart toppers, but you know he does the voice for a crime solving reggae loving mouse. And second thing, I was talking to a friend about Rastamouse at the pub the other week (being the standard student that I am) and he recommended watching it drunk. It makes everything a little bit more fun apparently. For the adults among you, I’d be interested to know if you agree or disagree with this!