Our Backyard

Our Backyard was a series for pre-school children which aired at lunchtime on ITV from August 1984 until January 1987.It was produced by Granada Television.

The format was simple. The programme revolved around a fictional family consisting of drama teacher Jean Burston, her real life three-year old daughter Laura Burston (who had turned six by the time the series was dropped) and actor Peter Lorenzelli as the father figure. Jean would usually take the educational lead while Peter was the comic relief and Laura's job was basically just to be cute, although whether scripted or otherwise she managed to infuriate her mother on several occasions. Songs of an educational nature, usually with a rock beat, were provided by The Band Next Door, similar in line-up to Rod, Jane and Freddy but with rock instruments and a more contemporary look than the Rainbow trio's long hair and colour co-ordinated dungaree outfits. A short puppet sketch featuring elderly neighbours Boris and Doris Macaroni would be featured about halfway into the episode, the two being "foreign" stereotypes speaking broken English in strong European accents. Beside the songs and the puppetry scenes, the series also featured stories read by Jean, with Peter play acting along with Jean's narration in an attempt to keep Laura amused, and Laura getting up to mischief with gardenening equipment, such as watering cans, wheelbarrows, sprinklers, porch lights and suchlike.

The series' theme tune was based around a repeated chorus, sung by Nicky Furre, a member of the Band next Door, with the words "At the back of our house is our backyard, at the back - you know, the back - not the front - but the back" repeated several times over, and the opening titles and end credits both featured an animated sequence that showed seven children playing around on playground equipment (slide, swings, roundabout), although no such scenes were ever seen in the series at any time, and besides Laura, no other children were ever featured in the series on a regular basis. The sequence showed an animated "seagull" singing the words in the theme tune but the character, Sammy the Seagull, was a mere garden mobile in the programme content and had no role beyond the first edition.

Three series were made altogether, and were given a lunchtime slot; originally, Granada had only intended to make one series which was scheduled to fill in the gap before the ITN News at One when the 1984 series of Rainbow finished for the year on ITV. Each episode was 15 minutes in length; the first series in 1984 was rushed into the ITV schedule in August 1984 when Granada's previous children's programme Sounds Like A Story with Mark Wynter was discontinued. Our Backyard was then renewed for a second and third series largely because the episodes could be made quickly and cheaply; the moderate popularity of the second series led to its being re-commissioned for a third series a year later. However, the 1986 series failed to earn enough viewers, and the series was cancelled in January 1987 halfway through the intended schedule, and was replaced by the relatively more popular programme, Allsorts.

Peter Lorenzelli and Jean Burston both continued with acting after the series was dropped, although Jean Burston eventually returned to teaching in the 1990s. Laura's current whereabouts are unknown, although she did study dramatic arts at Sheffield University between 1999 and 2002.

Nicky Furre went on to be the Musical Director of Bob Carlton's "Return to the Forbidden Planet" playing the part of Science Officer/Gloria in the original West End run.