Mr. Lister

Mr. Lister is a Jetanie children's educational television series. Consisting of two series and 28 epsiodes, it premiered in 1978, airing on Wednesday mornings as part of the Windmill programming strand, and was reran for over twenty years. A reboot, Mr. Lister and Friends, began airing in 2001.

Premise
Mr. Lister is a school teacher, who teaches primary school children a variety of different subjects, including writing and numeracy. Every episode is based upon a certain subject.

Every episode lasts 15 minutes, but the main plotline in each episode only lasts 7 minutes. The rest of the runtime is given to two different segments. The first segment, Oldtime Tales, feature flashbacks of Mr. Lister as a child, and helping somebody with their problem. The second segment, Ditzy's Dits, focuses on an alien called Ditzy, who watches the episode from outer space in order to help him with a problem of his own that he faces.

In between the segments are three different songs; the intro, the interlude and credits themes.

Episode structure

 * Intro song (1 min)
 * Oldtime Tales (2 min)
 * breif introduction to Ditzy (1 min)
 * main Mr. Lister segment (7 min)
 * Interlude song (1 min)
 * Ditzy's Dits (2 min)
 * Credits song (1 min)

Production
Development on Mr. Lister began in 1976. The show was created by Taylor Ridley, who also created several other Windmill programmes.

When producing the show, the team was split into three different groups, with the Oldtime Tales and Ditzy's Dits segments being made by the two smaller groups. According to Taylor Ridley, this helped episodes to be produced and finished faster compared to their previous work.

Mr. Lister was the last original programme to be introduced on the lineup of Windmill before it was axed in 1979.