Format
The series' original intention was to teach children safety, reading and basic health and fitness. The show featured a mixture of human actors and puppets. Originally it featured the actor Tony Hughes as Herbert The Handyman, along with the puppet characters Mr Bits and Pieces and Purrfecta the Cat, and another two puppets called Alice (a hamster) and Crow, but they were replaced by a puppet dragon called Duncan in 1979, who was in turn replaced in 1983 The two new puppets, a pair of friends of an uncategorisable animal species, Cosmo, a female, from the North East of England, and Dibs, male, a Londoner, who lived in a street market.
The scripts aimed to inform, educate and entertain and see the world from a child’s point of view. Explicitly the aim was not to patronise. A successful group of sketches dealing with ‘Safety’ included the subject of child abuse, unusual in a series for this age group. It was welcomed by the charity, Kidscape, and featured on the national news. Songs and stories were always included, with an emphasis on cultural diversity – You and Me was one of the few programmes at the time to do this. Short documentary films covered a wealth of subjects from farming to the Notting Hill Carnival.
Read more about this topic: You And Me (TV Series)