If You Don't Know Them Already, You Might Want To After Hearing The Plots Of These Ridiculous 2000s British Children's Shows

Everyone remembers classics like The Story of Tracy Beaker, Get Your Own Back, and The Queen's Nose, but I wonder if you remember these other gems!

1. Best of Friends (2004–2008)

BBC

This reality game show was first on the CBBC channel and then on BBC1. The premise saw groups of five "best friends" completing challenges together, such as picking up litter, mucking out animals, or getting their feet tickled without laughing. The show tested its participants' friendships by having the kids pick out of an "unlucky dip" who would do the task, and who would instead get to do a treat. Treats would be something like visiting a theme park or meeting puppies. The number of kids who were eligible for the treat depended on the success of the previous task. As the show went on, friendships were often tested, especially if some of the children weren't pulling their weight in the tasks. The show would follow whether the kids helped each other out to get the tasks done and remain good friends, or turned on each other. Do you think it would be made today?

2. Shoebox Zoo (2004–2005)

BBC

Shoebox Zoo was a BBC fantasy drama set in Edinburgh. It told the story of eleven-year-old Marnie, an American girl who comes to live in Scotland with her Scottish father after the death of her mother. Lonely, homesick, and grieving, she struggles to make new friends. However, on a visit to a junk shop, she comes across an old shoe box containing four model animals. When Marnie takes them home, they turn out to be alive. They reveal themselves to be ancient scholars, over a thousand years old, who have been trapped in this form by an evil sorcerer. With Marnie's help, the animals go on a journey to defeat this sorcerer. The show draws on Celtic and Medieval mythology, and ran for 26 episodes!

3. Feather Boy (2004)

BBC

Actor Thomas Brodie-Sangster made a name for himself in the much-loved 2004 classic Love Actually. However, in the same year he also played the leading role in CBBC drama Feather Boy. In this six-episode series, based on the book of the same name, Brodie-Sangster played the shy, sensitive Robert, a lonely boy who is bullied at school. At home, his parents have recently divorced, and Robert is also having strange recurrent dreams where he has large, feathered wings and can fly. As part of a school project pairing children up with older people living in a local care home, Robert meets an elderly lady who asks him to go to an abandoned house to honor the memory of a boy who fell from the top floor many years earlier. She also asks him to make her a coat of feathers so that she can fly, too. Robert becomes increasingly convinced that he is connected to this other boy and that his dreams are a form of premonition. Almost nobody seems to remember this series now, and it is not even mentioned on Brodie-Sangster's Wikipedia page.

4. Jeopardy (2002–2005)

BBC

Jeopardy was a series about a group of secondary school students and their teacher, who travel from Scotland to the Australian outback to look for UFOs. It was a co-production between the UK and Australia, also airing on ABC in Australia. In the show, the kids each have their own camcorder which they use to capture the strange events unfolding around them. Most of the show then makes use of a shaky, found-footage camera style. The kids undergo normal teenage interpersonal dramas, while also trying to deal with alien abductions and find out what is really going on. When the series ended, viewers on CBBC were asked to vote for one of three different endings, with a choice of a "happy," "spooky," or "surprising" ending. The "spooky" ending won out.

5. Big Kids (2000)

BBC

Big Kids was in some ways the BBC's answer to hit ITV show My Parents are Aliens, in that it showed that parents can sometimes be very strange. It told the story of Kate and Simon, a sister and brother whose parents attend a hypnotist show with disastrous consequences. The hypnosis goes wrong and has the parents reverting back to their childhood selves. The parents begin acting in unruly ways, while their own kids have to grow up and work together to keep their condition a secret. All the while, they're trying to find out how to restore their parents back to their old selves. Production company Noggin, who co-produced the show, described it as exploring "the complex and sometimes chaotic nature of the relationship between parent and child." The comedy-drama was a co-production with an American company, thus *allegedly* leading to a storyline about kids drinking at a school dance to be watered down.

6. Evacuation (2006–2008)

BBC

Few people I've spoken to seem to remember this absolute classic. It's was a reality historical reenactment — programming which is actually more common on British TV than you might think. Evacuation saw a number of modern-day British school children experiencing wartime life by being evacuated to the countryside where they had to live on a farm with a bunch of adults who kept relentlessly in character. The kids had to dress in wartime clothing (complete with gas masks), cut their hair in accordance with 1940s standards, go to school, collect eggs, muck out the animals, and even have tea with the vicar. In one memorable scene, Felix forgets his hanky and wipes his nose on his prayer book. The show was narrated by Matt Baker and portrayed modern children struggling with a very different way of life. However, it also brings real peoples' wartime experiences to life in a way that a history book never could.

7. Cave Girl (2002—2003)

BBC

This series was set in a fictionalized version of the Stone Age, which, like The Flintstones, had lots of references to modern life and prehistoric versions of modern appliances. Its central character, simply named Cave Girl, played by Stacey Cadman, was feisty and free-spirited. She got up to many adventures, and it also followed her family as well as others in their small community. The series was filmed in the Western Cape province of South Africa. The rights to a film adaptation were later acquired, but this has never been made.

8. Raven (2002–2010)

BBC

Okay, so I'm sure all of you remember the iconic, fantasy adventure game show, Raven. The child competitors were referred to as "warriors" and were each given new fantasy names, used exclusively in the show. The warriors completed a series of tasks, or quests, which could see them losing lives, represented by feathers, or winning gold rings. At the end of each show, the warrior with the fewest gold rings had to complete the "Way of the Warrior," a complex obstacle course. Warriors who failed in the challenge were eliminated and would dramatically disappear from the screen. All of this was presided over by the character of Raven, played iconically by James Mackenzie. Raven was meant to be an ancient warrior/magician who could read the competitors thoughts and shapeshift into a bird and fly away. He wore a black feathered cloak, carried a magic, raven-headed staff, and uttered mysterious catchphrases like, "may the luck of the raven's eye be with you." As much as it was a children's game show, I'd argue he is as important a fantasy character as any in popular culture. And surely he must have had the Game of Thrones costume department on the phone? Ultimately, Raven ran for eight years, 12 seasons, and also inspired spin-off shows like Raven: Secret Temple, and Raven: Dragon's Eye.

Let me know which of these shows you remember, or which I missed, in the comments below! Do you think these would still be made today?