Charley in New Town

 Here's the lovely 1948 public service film, Charley in New Town. It's an animation promoting the idea of new towns, shortly after Stevenage, Harlow, Crawley, Hemel Hempstead and Newton Aycliffe had been designated as part of the first wave of Britain's postwar rebuilding.

The jolly, naive, patrician style, with its Ealing Comedy voiceover and cheeky Carry On soundtrack uses similar matey tricks the Ministry of Information had employed in wartime campaigns such as Dig For Victory. It feels much closer to those than it does to later promotional films for the towns, which gradually came to resemble less these cosy British comedies and more the serious kitchen sink dramas of the late fifties, albeit given a utopian spin. But before all that, Charley was pure Potato Pete, and proud.