There is a timeless beauty to simplicity. More than a decade ago, when my son was a few years old, I remember watching a TV series for kids on Cartoon Network. Originally made by Nickelodeon, “Oswald” was about a fun-loving octopus living with his friends in a neighbourhood of a big city. The main characters apart from Oswald, are “Weenie” which is Oswald’s pet dog, and Oswald’s friends – “Henry” the Penguin and “Daisy” is a tall daisy. Seeing the characters, I wished my life was as simple as Oswald’s.
Each episode is brief at 12 minutes and nothing unpleasant happens – everyone is nice and helpful. There are 52 episodes, all aired between 2001 to 2003, before the show was cancelled. The plots for each episode are straight forward, easier for small kids to be understood – like strolling in the nearby park, buying ice-cream, bird watching, going for a sleepover, building a birdhouse, raising a fish, running in a local race and so on.
My favourite character from the series was Henry, the penguin who tries to be a perfectionist and the episode I liked the most was “Henry needs a haircut” – I had shown this to my son to calm and convince him to come for his haircut to a local saloon.
Venkatarangan
For me, the best thing about Oswald was the voice of Fred Savage, who played the unforgettable Kevin Arnold in the television series The Wonder Years from 1988 to 1993. And watching Henry, who says “two marshmallows, no more & no less”, I started to like marshmallows!
If you are in India, all the 52 episodes are available for free from Voot. If not, there are few episodes in YouTube – Oswald job for a day and Tomato Garden.
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