If you have children of a certain age, then I am certain you may have come into contact with a TV programme called "In the Night Garden". At the beginning, I used to just let it wash over me but then the deeper meaning and tragedy of the lead protagonist struck me.
The show begins at night time with a small child (different for every show) about to go to sleep. Their parent strokes their hand and so the show begins. They are told to imagine a boat the size of their hand and it cuts to Iggle Piggle alone at sea:
The boat sails off into the distance and Iggle Piggle joins his friends "In the Night Garden".
Now this seems all harmless, but when you think about the narrative construct of the show there is a dark sadness running through it. Firstly, Iggle Piggle doesn't actually exist in this programme for he is a dream in the child's imagination and so therefore one can deduce that Iggle Piggle's adventures in the garden are his dream. So you have a dream within a dream.
In the first dream, Iggle Piggle is happy and having all sorts of adventures in his dream world, The Night Garden, but in reality (or the first layer of dream reality) he is in fact alone, abandoned on the sea at night. At the end of every show, all the characters go to sleep except Iggle Piggle, because he's already asleep, alone on the dark sea. Now what I find upsetting is that the baby at the beginning of the show continually dreams of poor old Iggle Piggle being alone on the sea. He is destined to be alone in the imagination forever until his dreams bring him the friends and company of which he desires.
So it is a programme about the dream world, the nature of desire and isolation.
Whoudathunkit, eh?
Here's a link to more of my thoughts on "In the Night Garden"
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