Review of Hi 5: Come On and Party & Hi Energy

Introduction

If you prop your pre-schoolers in front of channel Five`s Milkshake at five to seven of a morning, then crawl back into bed to finish your interrupted night`s kip, you probably don`t know about Hi-5, but your rugrats will. For anybody else out of the loop, Hi-5 is an Australian pre-school edutainment show made by Channel 9 that channels the spirit of the long-gone and much-missed PlayAway.

It features five live-wire presenters (three girls and two boys) - Charli Robinson, Tim Harding, Nathan Foley, Kellie Hoggart and Kathleen deLeon who keep their two-to-eight-year-old target audience in both the studio and at home entertained with cute, catchy songs and stories.

Such relentless cheeriness can be a little wearing for us cynical over-eights, but then everything is new and fresh to its target audience. Much of the programme is performed in front of a studio audience of frequently baffled-looking youngsters who gamely throw themselves into the routines.

Both shows "Come On And Party" and "Hi Energy" run for around 52 minutes.

Video

The shows are presented in their original 16:9 Anamorphic aspect ratio. Colours are bright and contrast is high in the assumption that today`s little mites have the attention spans of goldfish and need bright things to attract their attention.

Audio

The shows come in loud and chirpy Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround.

Features

Episodes are subtitled, which may actually help youngsters with reading skills. Ever thought about that? On both discs, you can select sequences from the show starring your favourite Hi-5er, two "sharing stories", sing along with karaoke versions (with or without vocals) of three songs from the show or jump directly to the songs from the menu. Terrifyingly, you can set the songs on endless loops…

Conclusion

If you`re old and creaky enough to remember PlayAway, this show will fill you full of wistful remembrances of Brian Cant and Floella Benjamin. Hi-5 are a group of pert and perky Aussie boys and girls in the Steps mould who perform songs and sketches (and jokes old and new) to an audience of befuddled primary-schoolers. As with everything aimed at the young these days, the show is produced under the rigorous gaze of educational and behavioural experts and thus is a riot of colour and noise to mesmerise even the most attention deficit mite. You`re going to have fun if it kills you.