The Secret Life of Four-Year-Olds, Channel 4 - TV review: Too many tantrums and not enough insight

There was scope for more adorable conversations and incidents, but instead it seemed more like a shouting match with whatever footage producers could get their hands on

Up and running: 'The Secret Life of Four-Year-Olds' (Richard Ansett)

Anyone who saw the one-off documentary The Secret Life of Four-Year-Olds earlier this year will have jumped for joy at news that the adorable film was to be made into a series. Now a six-parter, The Secret Life, follows three groups of children aged four, five and six, in order to show that children really do say the funniest things.

Episode one saw some clashes of personalities among the four-year-olds, with larger-than-life Tia upset that Orla and Charlotte wouldn't play with her on the slide. The more sociable Theo was determined to befriend the introverted Tyler, who preferred to ask his dad for a fish finger sandwich on the plastic telephone.

The cutest moment came when Tia bounced over to Nathaniel to ask for his advice about how to deal with the fact that her so-called friends didn't want to hold her back down the slide. Resident development psychologists pointed out this was an unusual move for a four-year-old, who would typically ask an adult what to do.

Overall, sadly this first episode didn't live up to its pilot. There was scope for more adorable conversations and incidents, but instead it seemed more like a shouting match with whatever footage producers could get their hands on.

The psychologists were on hand to analyse the children's every move, but it was unclear exactly what they hoped to find out. The children were rarely tested with tasks and instead the episode seemed to make up its own conclusions based on the four-year-olds' random play.

Other than learning that girls aged four are linguistically five months ahead of boys, the documentary didn't deliver what could have been a charming, educational insight into the lives of pre-school children.