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Like a very gentle kiddie descendent of ‘Bake Off...’, children’s show ‘Kika’s Birthday’ features the not inconsiderable USP of storyteller/host Danyah Miller baking a chocolate cake in real time. This act in itself probably goes halfway to holding the attention spans of a crowd of three- to eight-year-olds, especially when pepped-up by Miller’s charming patter and the predictably priceless audience interjections.
But we expect puppets at the Little Angel and puppets we get, as Miller intercuts her Mary Berry-isms – she is notionally baking the cake for her daughter’s sweet 16 – with a delightful little story about a mouse named Kika, who waits through the seasons for the advent of her birthday… a pleasant task, with the only cloud on the horizon an apparently malign cat.
Household objects and kitchen items – bags of flour and whatnot – are deftly manipulated to turn them into little mouse puppets and it’s all extremely endearing.
‘Kika’s Birthday’ doesn’t quite have the eccentricity or invention of the Little Angel’s absolute best shows. But it is almost unstoppably winning. Plus: there’s chocolate cake at the end! (NB a fruit alternative is available for the more Islingtony of Islington parents).