Bernard’s Watch “A Little More Time”               

         

Narrative and Characterisation

“A little More Time” is quite a narrative episode; however it doesn’t tell you the story of all that has happened previously, it only shows things directly into the episode, which is called the plot. The plot of the story is that Bernard uses his watch in daily activities in school to get him out of awkward situations, and ends up getting the highest score on the mental maths test his teacher set, and his parents being proud.  Bernard’s watch as a whole is different as Tzvetan Todorov’s theory of narrative stages goes back and forth as there are constantly little problems occurring that he needs his magic watch for. The five stages are, firstly a state of equilibrium, secondly a disruption of the equilibrium, thirdly a recognition that there has been a disturbance, fourthly an attempt to repair the disruption, and lastly a equilibrium is restored.  Bernard’s watch episode starts off with a state of equilibrium, where he is off to school on a normal day. The first disruption is when the teacher sets a mental maths test, and then Bernard realises he takes a while to figure the problems out. He then tries to attempt to repair the disruption by using his magic watch and stopped time, to give him the time to figure each problem out with the time he needs, and gets top of the class. Equilibrium seems to have been restored but then the head teacher calls him into his office and once again he’s faced by yet more maths questions and there has been a disruption again. Once again Bernard has to attempt to restore the situation by using his watch. So there are more than 5 set stages in this storyline.

The narrative was a restrictive narration. All children’s dramas are restrictive because there’s only so much information you can give to the audience without spoiling the storyline, however a news channel would be an unrestrictive narration as a news channel has no limits in what it can tell you. Even though it’s a restrictive narration, you do have a narrative speaker, telling the story to you as you go along, giving you a bit more information of what Bernard is thinking which is good for children as they can follow through and listen and if they got a bit confused the narrator will be telling them what’s happening. But still the narrator can still only tell you what’s happening at that moment in time and cannot tell you what’s going to happen next.  Which could also been seen as a bit of objective character identification, as your getting Bernard’s thoughts being told to you by the narrator.

 There are some of Propp’s theory of Narrative is in this episode, he said that characters take up the role of narrative functions,  and he came up with seven character types, however in this episode I only found 3 of the character types.  We have the hero, Bernard.  A hero is usually a male and they restore the narrative equilibrium. Bernard in the episode gets himself out of trouble by using his magic watch to stop time and fix the problems that come his way, which makes him a hero. There were two villains in the story; the villain is the one who usually creates the narrative disruption. The villains were his school teacher, who set the class the mental maths test, and then later on, the head teacher, who called Bernard into his office because he didn’t believe Bernard did that well on the test without some form of help, and gave him maths questions on the spot. I decided these were villains because to children, having a test is a bad thing and would think of their teacher as villain for setting it. And finally there was the dispatcher. The dispatcher is the one who sends the hero on their journey. The dispatcher was Bernard’s dad, as it was his dad who dropped him off to school to start his journey though the day.

All series have a modular narrative; a modular narrative is a form of setting out the way in which it’s presented. This episode is an episodic narrative.  An episodic narrative is narrative put together of loosely connected incidents, each one more or less the same and often connected by a central character or characters and is one way of constructing the plot. It applies to this episode and the series as a whole because it’s about the main character Bernard, and the little problems he comes across during his day. It’s a good narrative for a children’s drama because it’s simple and easy to follow, so children will be able to understand it better, than if it was an anachronic modular narrative for example, the use of flashbacks and/or flash-forward’s with no clear meaning as to why it’s there, would really confuse children so it isn’t appropriate for that type of audience. 

The new version of Bernard's watch is slightly different with narration. It still is a restricitive narration as it can only tell you so much information, and it is still and episodic narrative, however there is no narration and Bernard speaks more for himself then the viewer being told what he is doing. They changed this so the new Bernard's watch would fit in better with modern children's dramas. The new Bernard's watch also has more minor characters in the series, so they would be more roles fitted for Propp's narrative theory.