Little Weed is back. And she's angry

The BBC announced yesterday that a highlight of its new season will feature two males and one post-feminist female. Older viewers might remember them. They are Bill and Ben the flowerpot men and their once-pliable sidekick, Little Weed.

The BBC announced yesterday that a highlight of its new season will feature two males and one post-feminist female. Older viewers might remember them. They are Bill and Ben the flowerpot men and their once-pliable sidekick, Little Weed.

After a 30-year absence, Bill and Ben is returning to children's television, remade by the top animation studio, Cosgrove Hall. And this time the trio have attitude. It is now unthinkable that Little Weed could be passive, immobile and silent. She will have a rounded character, a full vocabulary, and will counsel her flowerpot friends.

For the BBC, which for decades has maintained that Bill and Ben would not appeal to present-day children, this marks a drastic change in thinking. The corporation's head of drama, entertainment and children's television, Alan Yentob, said that he was alsolooking at two other favourites of the Fifties and Sixties, Andy Pandy and The Woodentops.

" The Woodentops has considerable potential," he said. "As for Bill and Ben, ask not why, ask why it has taken so long. The new animation technologies really bring it to life. And it still has the great virtue of their private language, the 'flobadob' which is very appealing to children who are learning to speak themselves."

Frank Vose, the new show's producer, said: "Thirty years ago, Bill and Ben didn't really speak. They just said 'flobadob'. Now there is more of a plot. If they want to get to the shed, they will say 'flobadob shed'." It is hard to keep pace with the broadcasting revolution.