For the past few weeks, my kids have been obsessed with a new kids’ show called LazyTown. It’s the story of a superhero, Sportacus, who teaches the kids in LazyTown how to be healthy by eating right, getting lots of sleep, and exercising. Sportacus is played by Magnus Scheving, who is Icelandic and has an adorable accent, and who is the competitive aerobics champion of Europe (I’m totally not making this up). He’s the show’s creator and producer. He directs every episode and writes the story outline for every episode. He designed the puppets (most of the townspeople are freaky brightly-coloured life-size puppets) and he even sings the theme song. It’s pretty safe to say it’s his show, not that much creative input is actually required. Every episode is basically the same: the bad guy, Robbie Rotten (Stefan Karl Stefansson, the “Jim Carrey of Iceland,” still totally not making this up), comes up with a nefarious plan to make the kids lazy and have Sportacus leave town forever, only to have Sportacus foil his plans through the power of sports and teeth brushing and a good nights’ sleep and the occasional disco-techno song about getting energy from “sports candy” (aka fruits and veggies).

At first I thought it was hilariously ironic that there was a TV show all about being active. Like, my kids could not be more comatose while they are watching TV — they just sit there, totally engrossed, without moving an inch. And the show itself, with the accents and the crazy colours and the puppets and the disco tunes was just weird. But then something strange started to happen — the kids actually absorbed the message. They started asking to drink water, because that’s what Sportacus drinks. They started asking for fruit and trying new vegetables, because they’d seen Sportacus eating them. Every so often, while playing, they will spontaneously drop and do a few push-ups (Magnus has a push-up routine he does on the show that is totally AMAZING, that dude has some serious core strength), and they love to run around the house and climb and jump while pretending to be Sportacus. During the show itself, they’ll dance along with the boppy tunes and try to do the exercise routines the kids are doing.

It’s like TV is actually educational! I’m considering having Magnus raise our kids.

My personal favourite part of the whole deal, though, is the Sportacus/Spartacus puns. These days when the kids are playing LazyTown, they sometimes fight over who gets to be Sportacus. Then they’ll yell at each other, “I. AM. SPORTACUS!” and the other will say, “NO! I. AM. SPORTACUS!”

And then I totally collapse into a fit of giggles, and then I have to spend an hour explaining to the kids just what, exactly, was SO FUNNY, MOMMY.