Dark Towers

Not to be confused with Stephen King's long-running post-apocalyptic magic cowbay saga, Dark Towers is a 1981 educational TV series aimed at primary schoolchildren. It's about two shabbily-dressed teenage misanthropes (Tracy, who likes dogs better than people, and Edward, the latest Lord Dark, who likes books better than people) overcoming their sexual tension long enough to solve clues and meet ghosts in the hopes of saving Edward's family home, the eponymous castle Dark Towers from two camp conmen and their henchwoman who hope to steal away the castle's antiques and burn it down.

You might wonder why anyone would bother watching a decades-old educational show, and there are really two reasons. The most obvious is nostalgia: though it was made and broadcast years before I (and, I assume most of my readership) was born, it was still being watched on tape at british primary schools well into the mid-90s, at the very least, along with most of the other Look and Read series that had been going since the early 1970s. Luckily for any adult viewers, some helpful soul by the name of malvolio80 has uploaded the series to Youtube with all but one of the awful educational sections mercifully excised. From what I remember, those parts were so slow and simplistic to be useless even when my age was in single figures, and I can only imagine how tedious and annoying they'd be to an adult viewer.

The other reason is the aesthetic: a dusty old castle full of books and ghosts, mystery-solving teenagers in shabby hand-me-down jumpers and master criminals that drive around in a knackered old van. The makers can't have known at the time, but Dark Towers is almost perfect as a simple introduction to some of the basic concepts of hauntology and late 20th century british folk-horror. Obviously, it's not only a childrens' show, but one made to be shown in schools, so the horror elements aren't particularly strong, and the budget is very low, but the look, the feel and the general ambience of the series work well.

You won't really be missing out on a great deal if you don't watch Dark Towers, but I assume it'll at least have some nostalgic value for most British readers, and it's not a terrible show either (in its edited form, at least). For anyone else interested in British kids' horror, something that skews a bit older in its target audience, like The Owl Service, Chocky, or Elidor, might be a better choice.

Environmental Superhero Ecogainder

Ecogainder is a low-budget tokusatsu TV series, and while this usually means a weird late night show made specifically for an adult audience, in this case, it's actually an educational show aimed at kids. Ecogainder himself is an android sent from the future to educate the people of 21st century earth about preserving the environment, though he seems to focus all his efforts on one middle class Japanese family. The villains, trying to tempt this same family into wasting energy and not recycling are the Eco Crushers, Mudaana (played by AKB48's Sayaka Akimoto) and Hakais, who are working under the orders of Queen Deathgaia.

Mudaana and Hakais are the most interesting characters in the show, as the Suzuki family are just generic "everyman" types, and Ecogainder himself barely has a personality at all, beyond giving environmental advice. They're based on the old Doronbo Gang archetypes started by Yatterman and seen in a ton of shows and comics and videogames since, though they're missing a fat guy, having only the attractive woman and skinny guy parts of the trio. Hakais is a pretty good example of exactly how low the budget for this show was, as the weapon he wields is clearly just a plastic Doctor Octopus arm toy, not even modified or repainted.

What's interesting about those two is how their relationship with the Suzukis changes over the course of the series. A typical episode sees a member of the family thoughtlessly doing something that's mildly environmentally unsound, like forgetting to recycle, or leaving the TV on standby, at which point the Eco Crushers will turn up and aggressively state how great it is that the family are helping the cause of environmental destruction. Then Ecogainder shows up, and the three of them go off to the "battlefield", which is some kind of big white tent thing, and Ecogainder shoots his ecology beam and the Eco Crushers are banished away.

But over time, the Suzuki family's reaction to the Eco Crushers changes: at first, they're scared and confused when Mudaana and Hakais show up to harass them, over time, they treat the villains as a mild nuisance, and the series' big turning point is a few episodes from the end, when the kids are bored and turn the heating up specifically to summon Mudaana and Hakais so they have more people to play cards with.

I'm sure I'm not spoiling anything when I reveal that in the last episode, Mudaana and Hakais turn against Queen Deathgaia and help Ecogainder in the final battle. It's predictable, but still nice. Ecogainder is definitely no must-watch series, but it's only fourteen nine-minute episodes, so if you really need to see a cheap superhero show, this one isn't too painful. Be warned though, that the series focuses mainly on comedy and educational value, with pretty much no real action on offer.
This series is also known as Kankyou Choujin Ecogainder