Jitter the Critter's Barnyard Adventures

While there is no real compelling reason not to like Jitter The Critter's hand puppet show, there is also no real compelling reason to recommend it either. Jenny and her sometimes cute puppets teach viewers about circles, rectangles, and triangles and sing a variety of songs around a painted farm backdrop. The plot loosely involves "evil Ed," who plans to sell the farm for development as a shopping mall, and there's nothing wrong with the program's message encouraging youngsters to be honest. But the dialogue sounds pretty ordinary, we've all heard the songs 1,000 times before ("Old MacDonald Had a Farm," "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star," "The Itsy Bitsy Spider," etc.), and the plot is silly and stereotypical. Ironically, the outtakes at the end of the program, showing mistakes made by the hand puppeteers, are much funnier than the program itself, because they remind us that human dimension and improvisation are much more fun to watch than heavily scripted, lackluster, traditional material. Not a necessary purchase. Aud: K, E, P. (R. Ray)