“Where’s the cat?” This is what the two zany policemen Stan and Dud (David Mitchell ja Neil Hardwick) were trying to find out in the 1970s language learning show “Hello, hello, hello”. While looking for the cat, they also taught English to the Finnish viewers – although not always in a grammatically correct way. The creators of the show wanted to maintain a simple vocabulary that could be easily learnt by the viewers.
The narrated children’s language programme was Neil Hardwick’s first screenplay for Yle. The programme was intended for young children, and it always began with a teaching moment. Tuva Träskman directed her words directly to the viewers, talked to her police puppets, and asked the viewers to repeat her words. The story was told with the help of slapstick comedy, and more than once it reached full psychedelia.
The cat was found, and the viewers would learn the most central (and grammatically incorrect) sentence of the show: “The cat is in the Moon”. However, the peculiar adventures of Stan and Dud did not end with the discovery of the cat. See clips from all the episodes of the show in the Yle archives.
