Look and Read/Bob and Carol Look for Treasure

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Bob and Carol Look for Treasure
Company:	BBC Television
First run:	Spring 1967
Episodes:	10 episodes 20 minutes
Subject:	English
Audience:	Age 7-9

Look and Read Stories
Previous story: Tom, Pat and Friday	Next story: Len and the River Mob

[edit] Introduction

The very first Look and Read story is a simple kids' adventure story featuring a scattering of recognisable plot devices. The unit is clearly split up into two separate sections of the same story: The Lost Treasure is all about thinking and solving clues, while The Stolen Treasure is much more action-packed, involving real villains, chases and dramatic goings-on.

The two villains are absolutely glorious: the bad-tempered Fat Man with his singular expletive "creeping cat!" and the strange Number One, constantly clad in black glasses. Some of the scenes are completely evocative of late-60s weirdness: the two baddies meet to exchange loot in the same park, but insist on communicating via a little toy boat; Number One charges off up a quiet Midlands canal in a fast motorboat and gets stuck in the locks; the secret hiding place which fooled treasure-seekers for centuries was under a big stone in the garden; a message in a bottle sent off into a canal happens to be picked up by the person it was meant for less than half-an-hour later...

[edit] The Story

Visit the Story Guide page for detalised synopses of the storyline in each episode. There are also summaries of the plot to each episode below.

[edit] Episodes

1. The Lost Treasure Part One
   • Carol goes to visit a big, old house and sees a statue of a Chinaman. Bella the goat eats some of the flowers and Carol has to chase her away.
2. The Lost Treasure Part Two
   • Carol meets a boy called Bob who lives on a boat. Carol sees another statue Chinaman on Bob's boat and Bob says it is a clue to a lost treasure.
3. The Lost Treasure Part Three
   • Miss Brown tells Bob and Carol about a rich man who long ago hid his treasure and left clues to find it written on a pair of statues.
4. The Lost Treasure Part Four
   • Bob and Carol begin following the clues to find the treasure. They find a stone, cross the canal and enter a mill. But the mill is too new to be the one in the clues.
5. The Lost Treasure Part Five
   • Bob and Carol realise that King's Mill is a village and go to investigate. Bella the goat makes trouble again by eating their map, but Bob still solves the final clues and the children discover an old piece of paper.
6. The Lost Treasure Part Six
   • The children finally uncover the lost treasure. They meet a rude, fat man with a motorbike and give him back the portable radio that he drops. Miss Brown discovers that an old picture has been stolen, and then the treasure is stolen too.
7. The Stolen Treasure Part One
   • Bob and Carol go up the canal and meet a man called Mike and a boy called Dan. They hear the Fat Man on the radio talking about stealing the picture and the treasure.
8. The Stolen Treasure Part Two
   • Bob and Dan go off to search for the "Red Dragon" while Carol overhears the Fat Man talking to Number One on the radio. Carol is locked in the boat house and has to try to get help.
9. The Stolen Treasure Part Three
   • Mike and the children go to Bell Park to try to catch the villains. Bob and Dan find Number One while Carol and Mike spot the Fat Man, but he runs away.
10. The Stolen Treasure Part Four
    • The Fat Man gets away so Mike and the children follow the Red Dragon and spot Number One. They get the police and the villains are finally caught in the locks. Bob and Carol recover the treasure and the picture.

[edit] Credits

Who was in which episodes?

   C A S T   D E T A I L S

starring                             EPISODES
                             ----------------------
JEAN ANDERSON                 1 2 3 4 5 6
VERONICA PURNELL              1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
STEPHEN LEIGH                 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
CHARLES LENO                      3
SEAN BARRETT                      3
SIMON LANZON                      3
ROBERT BRIDGES                          6   8 9 10
PETER HEMPSON                             7 8 9 10
CARL GONZALES                             7 8 9 10
FRANK DUNCAN                                  9 10
TREVOR LLOYD                                    10

[edit] Response from viewers

The BBC School Broadcasts Bulletin covering the story

The response of many children and teachers who watched the first broadcast of this story was surveyed in a BBC School Broadcasts Bulletin entitled Television and Backward Readers in the Junior School, written by Ellen C. Mee a consultant to the School Broadcasting Council.

Here are two genuine letters from child viewers of the story, sent to the Look and Read production office in Spring 1967, as quoted in the Bulletin:

Dear Tom Gibbs,
We have enjoyed your programme and it is very kind of you. You have taught Mrs Todds class to read. We have got a book of Bob and Carol and on the first page we have Bella the goat and on the second page we have the canal boat. I like the fat man saying 'Jumping Jack'. I wish I had a boat like the Red Dragon. It is a wonderful boat. We know the colours, red and green. We have a Red Dragon and we have coloured our bottle with messages with beautiful colours. We have Bob and Carol books each and we have enjoyed reading them. I like Bob and Carol and Dan and I think they did well catching the fat man.
We are sorry the programme has finished and hope you will soon give us another "Look and Read" programme.

Dear Mr Gibbs,
I hope you are well. This is a wee letter saying that the programme of the Lost Treasure was good. I hope you will put another programme on that will be the Found Treasure. I hope Adam Kent has his Treasure back. I hope Bob and Carol and Dan and Mike are well and I hope you are well.

Here is a review of this story written for the journal Visual Education by a teacher who used Look and Read's very first broadcast in Spring 1967. It carefully avoids mentioning anything about the actual story, but it does include a little about the pupils' and teachers' material, and reveals that the programme committed one of the greatest mistakes of black-and-white television.

LOOK AND READ (B.B.C. TV - Spring term)
This series was designed to help Junior children who have some facility in word recognition but who nevertheless find reading difficult.
In this school the series was followed by a less able class of 20 children with chronological ages 7-9, but with reading ages from 6-7½.
As a different approach to the teaching of reading, it is felt that the programme was stimulating and very worth while. The story was well within the children's comprehension and each new instalment was looked forward to with eagerness.
The follow-up provided ample work, but as there was so much that could be done one wonders whether some improvement could be made to the children's pamphlets for their future use. Each week the appropriate section had to be removed from the pupils' pamphlets and put into the children's own work book. This took a long time and did not make a satisfactory book.
It might be better to present each section bound as a separate unit with a few blank sheets attached for follow-up work, which could then be stored in a loose leaf folder.
Some weaknesses in presentation were eradicated as the series went along, e.g. some difficulty was experienced in the early programmes when white printing appeared on a light background. This was remedied in the later programmes, when a black band was used as a background for the lettering.
Timing also presented some difficulty for this particular class. The children found that the reading could be done easily in the alloted time, but the flashing of the little men letters and sounds was much too fast for them.
As an experiment this was very successful and one would feel that the series realised its aims and is worth repeating.
R. H. C. Fice, Hooe Junior School, Hooe, Plymstock, Devon in Visual Education, May 1967, pp.35-7

[edit] Production

A Bob and Carol Look for Treasure reunion! Veronica Callow who played Carol back at Packwood House where much of the story was filmed, in 1999.

Behind the Scenes on Bob and Carol Look for Treasure

Bob and Carol look for treasure was filmed from 12th to 23rd September 1966 in the Birmingham area. Click here to view a page from the shooting schedule, mainly covering the flashback story of the Kent family from episode 3.

The major location used was the National Trust property 'Packwood House' at Solihull, and scenes were also filmed at 'Lowsonford village' near Packwood, 'Brearley Mill' at Snitterfield, the 'Gas Street Basin' in central Birmingham and on the 'Birmingham canal'.

Packwood House is open to the public and can still be visited today, here is an independent website about the house including lots of pictures. Gas Street ("just beyond the BBC canteen in the centre of Birmingham") can be visited by going to Birmingham and driving along it.

Veronica Callow (née Purnell - Carol herself!) had a great time filming the programme, but had some trouble acting alongside the stubborn animal playing Bella the goat. Veronica was 15 when the story was made, but says she "looked about 12" (!) and Stephen Leigh, playing Bob, was slightly younger: "he could be a bit annoying sometimes but we got on quite well"! The blundering villain known as the Fat Man, played by Bob Bridges, did not apparently come across as especially evil; Number One seems to have been the nasty one, though Veronica had hardly any scenes with him and doesn't remember him at all.

The actors from the drama were invited down to London to view a short-film version of their scenes after filming had completed, though they never had the chance to see the finished programmes including the teaching segments. Veronica tried taking a morning off school, claiming she was going to the dentist, to sneak a look at the broadcasts, but unfortunately got found out!

[edit] Resources

[edit] Pupil's Pamphlet

The pupil's pamphlet

[edit] Teacher's Notes

The teacher's notes

[edit] In the Archive

According to the free online version of the BBC Programme Catalogue, all that remains from this story in the BBC archives are two specially shot film sequences ("SP S FILM") from episode 4: one six minutes long, perhaps one of the drama sequences, and the other just under two minutes long, perhaps a song & animation sequence?

The BBC began making filmstrip copies of some of its schools programmes available for loan to educational establishments in the early 1960s. Look and Read was never included in this scheme and no loan or hire rights to the programmes were ever arranged. However, a 16mm telerecording of episode 4 (coincidence?) of this story was offered by the Schools Broadcasting Council for use in teacher training colleges (but not normal schools) accompanied by copies of the teacher's notes and pupil's book plus a special set of lecturer's notes, to help encourage newly qualified teachers to use television programmes.

I wonder if any copies of this film might have survived as an example of early Look and Read?

[edit] Broadcasts

Wallchart listing for the 1967 broadcast of "John and Carol Look for Treasure" (sic)

If you remember this story from primary school, then you would have seen it in one of these terms. See the schedules section for precise dates and times.

• Spring 1967
• Autumn 1968
• Autumn 1970