One year ago, Ben Shapiro and The Daily Wire announced their intention to throw a $100 million hat into the children’s programming arena. Their laudable goal was to create programs that would entertain without transforming children into transgendered proletariat chipmunks who use petroleum-based adhesives to glue themselves to highways in an effort to end the use of petroleum. With that, we present to you our review of Bentkey’s A Wonderful Day with Mabel Maclay.

A Wonderful Day with Mabel Maclay (S1: E1 & 2)

Normally, I try to avoid writing reviews in the first person. It looks less professional and makes me a part of the story, which is antithetical to writing with objectivity. However, I’m breaking this rule with some of this article for two reasons. First, I find The Daily Wire’s venture into children’s programming deeply personal.

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I have a small army of school-aged children, and my wife and I are constantly struggling to find appropriate and engaging programming that won’t turn them into blue-haired vagina hat-wearing lunatics willing to sacrifice their sexual organs for Instagram likes. They are the reason that I launched Worth it or Woke nine months ago and have been living on three hours of sleep and 5-Hour Energy (I figure that equals 8 hours) ever since, as I watch hours of programming, write reviews, try to build our social media presence, create new products for our store, all while I run my other full-time small business.

Second, this particular program, A Wonderful Day with Mabel Maclay, is purpose-built to appeal to small children, making my perspective on it virtually irrelevant, except to give any warnings to my fellow parents, should they be warranted.

As luck would have it, our youngest children (ages 9 – 2) were home sick today (luck has a sense of humor dunnit?) and were happy to be drafted to watch TV with their daddy. Therefore, a goodly portion of this review revolves around my observations of them and what they thought.

Let’s start with what I can comfortably comment on. The production design is absolutely top-tier and is easily on par with anything coming out of PBS, etc. The colors pop without being loud and busy, and the 1950’s-sheek meets 2023-traditional aesthetic, along with some loving attention to detail, gives the eye plenty to look at. All of this aids in making Mabel Maclay feel like an established property.

The general vibe of the program has heavy notes of Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood combined with the vibrance of Barney and Friends (minus the soul-sucking sappiness) and just enough originality to give it potential. With a mixture of creative animation, special guests, and her puppet sidekick Jasper, Mabel and her friends teach life lessons about creativity, being intellectually curious, etc.

Like those mentioned above, the success of this show will likely fall squarely on the shoulders of its characters. Jasper, a puppet dog with a twangy Southern accent and lovable disposition, is impressively voiced by Rickey Boyd, who has done voice work for Sesame Street and more.

The show’s lead, Mabel Maclay, is played by its co-creator and writer, Katy Chase. Without a doubt, Chase looks the part. She is attractive yet reserved and modest and has a warm and inviting smile. Unfortunately, she often seems uncomfortable, regularly making halfhearted and awkward arm gestures while occasionally running out of steam mid-sentence, making her performance inconsistent and lethargic when dynamism is needed.

That said, there is something to be said for slowing things down and not making this another hyperfrenetic ADD-inducing montage of colors and sounds, and there was a marked improvement between Chase’s performance and energy level in the pilot and the second episode. Furthermore, a quick Google search shows that both she and her co-creator husband have an extensive IMPROV background. This leads me to believe that she will come along nicely once Chase better defines the character and spends more time in her shoes.

No one cares, James. Tell us what your kids thought.

The Daily Wire provided us with the first two episodes today, and the six of us sat down for a back-to-back viewing.

My first observation was that all five of them were engaged and, more importantly, silent throughout both episodes. Even the 9-year-old boy, who later told me that he thought it was “a little bit more for little kids,” sat and watched without fidgeting while the littlest among them were excitedly responding to questions being asked by the host.

As a general consensus, my children liked the program and specifically enjoyed all of the major points of interest it presented (e.g., Jasper, the Masterpiece Machine, storytime, and especially the boat-car). Since I love my children and they aren’t Amish-like entertainment-deprived kids like those of Matt Walsh, who likely feared that the black box on the wall was about to steal their souls when it was turned on for the first time yesterday, this is high praise indeed.

Summary

A Wonderful Day with Mabel Maclay is a pleasant children’s program. If I have one criticism, it would be that the “lessons” could stand to be better focused and a wee bit more poignant or of more practical value. However, it’s very early in the show’s run, and it has all of the components it needs to grow and mature for us to mark it as Worth it as it is, with the caveat that it’s Worth it for children five and under.

WOKE ELEMENTS

It was such an unmitigated relief to know that there would be no attempts to indoctrinate my children into radical Leftism, Marxism, or the Church of LGBTQRSTUV.