Бүгінгі арнайы: Канад балалар телесериалы

Canadian children's television series
the Canadian children's television show

Today's Special is a Canadian children's television program produced by Clive VanderBurgh at TVOntario, originally broadcasting 120 episodes from 1981 to 1987. Much of the series was set in a department store, based on Simpson's then flagship location in Toronto. Some store sequences were shot at the Queen Street West and Yonge Street store after hours. The show ran on TVOntario in Canada as well as Nickelodeon in the United States. Reruns of the series continued into 2000 on stations such as PBS affiliates (most of which stopped airing by the mid 1990s) in the United States and on Treehouse TV in Canada.

In the children's department of a major department store, each night when Jodie arrives for work, she carries a mannequin (Jeff) upstairs, where Muffy says the magic words "hocus pocus alimagocus!" This brings him to life. Many early episodes focused on a tangible object as a subject, such as hats or costumes, with the show revolving around teaching about it. Later episodes dealt with more complicated ones, such as the episode "Wishes" dealing with sacrificing one thing for another, "Butterflies", which deals with death, or "Phil's Visit", which dealt with alcoholism. Short films, often less than a minute long, were often inserted as breaks in the episode's main plot, narrated by Robyn Hayle (the same actor who provided the voice of TXL). These included Mime Lady segments, animated quizzes designed to test a child's observation, narrated storybooks, and popular nursery rhymes (which an unseen Muffy would introduce with "And now I'd like to introduce a nursery rhyme by Mother Goose"). Many episodes featured one or more one time visitors to the store. Some would cause problems for the characters, while others would befriend them and help solve their problems. These visitors included the characters' friends or family, people coming to the store to do their jobs, people brought there by magic ("Treasure Hunts", "The Queen of Hearts"), bizarre, non human characters ("Space", "Sam and the Robot"), and real life celebrities ("Opera", "Trash"). Magic was important to many episodes, and the characters sometimes would have an adventure that involved it.