Round The Twist, Season 3 Episode 8: Brainless

The wild, wacky and weird children’s program Round The Twist premiered on Australian televisions in 1990, based on stories by the popular children's author Paul Jennings, who collaborated on the making of the series.  

Airies Inlet on Victoria’s Great Ocean Road stood in for the fictional town of Port Niranda, where a sculptor called Tony Twist lived in a lighthouse with his three children: the teenage twins Peter and Linda, and their younger brother Bronson. Their adventures, featuring supernatural elements like ghosts, time-travelling Vikings, a dryad, or terrifying clowns under the bed, were full of wordplay and physical comedy; although it was made for kids, the show was intended to appeal to all ages, and showed the problems and obsessions of both older and younger children.  

In the episode Brainless, Bronson and his friend Anthony conduct a science experiment on Pete and Linda that goes terribly wrong, extracting their brains from their bodies. Then, Anthony, who has an unrequited crush on Linda, accidentally puts a love spell on her when he borrows her magical book – and Linda’s brain, many miles away, starts homing back to her ‘sugar plum’. It’s a visceral representation of a teenage crush, with a touch of family-friendly body horror and a hefty dose of the show’s trademark absurdity.  

Did you know? Tamsin West, the original actress for Linda Twist, sang the theme song, which borrowed from various nursery rhymes to create a catchy and utterly memorable tune.

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