To really miss those early Sunday evening children's BBC serials we used to watch.

[Retropear]

Such as The Phoenix and the Carpet etc.

We'd all watch them together with toast round the fire.

Wonder why they don't do them now.

Glad that people have mentioned Thursday's Child, I loved that, but was beginning to think I was perhaps the oldest person on the thread as no one else seemed to remember it (it was early 70's I think). I think Tom Brown's School Days was also serialised. Oh happy days of old!

I remember White Horses, and the theme tune. It was from Czechoslovakia (as it still was then) I think. Talking of stonking theme tunes, does anyone remember the Flashing Blades?

I miss the kids drama the BBC used to produce. Dark Season,Children of green knowe, Moondial.
Loved the ones on Sundays especially in the lead up to Christmas.

"I do remember a series which frightened the life out of me, don't think it was Sunday evenings more weekday afternoon before "Newsround", called "Changes" or something similar where people were turned mad by electricity. For years after I was scared when going under pylons...."

YES! YES! YES! Me too! I'm 49 and still scared of pylons after that programme - sinister feckers!

Loved Thursdays Child and also the dubbed czech ones. "Three Gifts for Cinderella" etc

Ayone remeber the Lost Island? about a group of children from all over the world off a sailing adventure. Sink sank in a storm and they were washed ashore on a strange island where people were living as if it were a few hundred years ago. Very warbly, Tony Christie sounding theme tune

Anybody remember the Flaxton Boys on Sunday evenings? Yes I used to love Black Beauty too. Also I remember the very very scary Singing Ringing Tree, that scared me to death. Aargh those were the days.....

Forgot to add I am well old!

Those series were great. When DD was younger we got a few on DVD - The Times did a special offer of various Children's Classics, either free or very cheap (in cardboard slipcovers, not like a proper commercial product). Included The Secret Garden and Tom Brown's Schooldays - at what that's being sold for now! and The Railway Children (not quite the same vintage but still good).

We all sat huddled on the sofa and watched The Secret Garden together the day after our previous dog died, the theme music took me right back.

Talking about dubbed programmes, I remember one called Three's Company, about 2 boys and a girl. It was Czech. No one else remembers it.

We've been doing this recently with the new Katie Morag series on cbeebies. My girls are 3 and 4 and really love them and for me it has been recreating a similar feeling as those old children's programs on a Sunday afternoon and has become our new Sunday teatime ritual to sit and watch the new Katie Morag each week. What a shame there isn't an equivalent on cbbc for us to move onto in a couple of years.

Ohhh yes, you knew it was nearly Christmas when these started on TV. It was lovely and cosy. The Children of Green Knowe, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Borrowers..

Bring them back!

I doubt its to do with TV moving on, more to do with horrid BBC bosses and budgets and viewing figures.

I think the production values were quite high, probably comparable with adult classic series of the time.

I know it's the Daily Fail but we have a bunch of DVDs from relatives who buy it daily and they cover narnia and few others that are mentioned as well as a load more so might be worth looking out for in the run up to Christmas?

I loved 5 children and it!! It was amazing and I always wanted a Psammead

They bored the absolute pants off me . I only liked the Jane Eyre (with Timothy Dalton) one.

It's like when my Mum forced us to play board games . It was all just so earnest.

"The Flying Kiwi" anyone?

Ahem. Lame to fame alert. The boy from The Box of Delights is my second cousin twice removed.

We watched the series last year and the year before in the run up to Christmas and made the kids wait between episodes. Love it.

Also: open fires, drop scones, toast and marmalade, sunday night hair washes, All Creatures Great and Small.

I only liked the Jane Eyre (with Timothy Dalton)
I thought he was really wooden in that - not a patch on the Rochester in the adaptation when I was 12 (Michael Jayston) - with Sorcha Cusack as Jane. Brilliant. Then the next year we had The Pallisers ...and before that War And Peace (Anthony Hopkins as Pierre but I was wowed by Prince Andrei) ... would an 11 yo nowadays watch that in 24 episodes!

I watched a bit of Downton Abbey for the first time recently, thought it was a bit meh TBH.

There was one about a schoolgirl whose father passed her a box of chocolates at the train station when she was off to boarding school and inside was a box containing a ring with a note saying 'keep safe'. Something to do with a revolution and a prince I think?

Can't for the life of me recall the name. So if anyone can help...

I remember most of those mentioned and its a shame they don't show more in serial form nowadays - perhaps they think the kind will lose interest. But recently I have enjoyed the Mr Stink and also Lost Christmas was fabulous but both were one episode long dramas.

I was only chatting the other day to a friend about how there are no book-based kids' dramas anymore. I loved The Witches and the Grinnygog and The Phoenix and the Carpet. I was tiny when The Changes was on an it scared the bejesus out of me.

Ooh just found out it was called 'schoolgirl chums' and is on youtube. That my afternoon sorted should be working really

The synopsis is ' In the 1930's, Alison starts a new boarding school and becomes embroiled in a sinister plot to dethrone the royal family of Bosnovia.'

Can I just ask how old you all are? I'm 41 and don't remember any of these programmes AT ALL!

I do remember some of the E Nesbit serials though - but they were part of children's tv on a weekday evening, not a Sunday.

Can I just ask how old you all are? I'm 41 and don't remember any of these programmes AT ALL!

I'm 35

Maybe your family was always doing something else at the time when they were mostly on.
I'm 41 and I remember most of them.

I'm 49 - fond memories of
Black Beauty
Anne of Green Gables
Narnia
Little House on the Prairie
Tom Brown's School Days
The Secret Garden
Follyfoot

Great thread. Wish they had such lovely family programmes on now (aprt from Merlin, which I think would count)