Hey Duggee!

Channel: CBeebies

Running Time: 7 minutes

Date: 2014- present

Early spoiler: this show is much, much better than it looks...

Premise: A series of anthropomorphic animal characters regularly attend a kind of after-school/day care style club: The Squirrel Club (though it appears that few, if any actual squirrels attend). Said club is run by the eponymous hero, Duggee, a large cuddly dog who only ever says 'Woof!', but has obtained the requisite paperwork to look after a number of young children in a variety of indoor and outdoor settings. Imagine Hodor as a Cub Scout Leader, and you're about there.

The Clubhouse: building and owner presumably up-to-date with all current Ofsted requirements

Each episode, the Squirrels earn a badge of some kind, related to the activity or challenge or problem that has been thrown their way in that episode. Some are more mainstream (the Drawing Badge, the Rescue Badge and the We Love Animals Badge), some are quite niche (the Omelette Badge, the Dancing Bug Badge) and some are just so 21st century (the Yoga Badge). Yet to be confirmed for series three are the Brexit-Means-Brexit Badge, the Safe-Sexting Badge, the Fidget-Spinner Badge, and the badge for big fans of 1990s episodes of Neighbours (the Madge Badge).

Some of the badges available to the Squirrels; also a range of attractive yet affordable coasters.

A cast of regular and minor characters keep things fresh and bouncy, such as the hippy Rabbits, and my personal favourites, the gangster mice (catchphrase upon departing a scene "Let's Bounce!", popularised in an early draft of Romeo and Juliet; Shakespeare eventually went with "Hence, be gone, away!")

The animation is minimalist but colourful; the plots are imaginative without slipping into 'zany', or zany's idiot cousin, 'wacky'; and the voice talent ranges from the subtle youngsters (learn a lesson, Bing), to the instantly recognisable (Alexander Armstrong, currently running out of digits to place into so many pies).

Background: Creator Grant Orchard of Studio AKA explains a lot in this comprehensive interview. He has a background in Flash animation and advertising, and clearly has affection for the aesthetic and the tone of the show. He is also one of the few people who goes out of their way to put a lot of their success  down to luck, which gives him bonus points.

He was asked to pitch an idea, he came up with some of the characters, and the rest, as they say, was developed over a consequent series of brainstorming sessions, animation tests, focus groups and pilot episodes. Or something.

The animation is all done on something called Flash, which I only know from the amount of times it crashes my browser, but I'm glad there are genuinely people out there who know what it does and how it is used. For simplicity's sake, Duggee is the only character with shade gradients, and some characters are simple shapes (the frogs are just green triangles with eyes, and it's about time someone took them down a peg or two).

A tutorial on how to draw a triangle with eyes. Somehow, three previous steps are necessary to get to this point.

It has recently won an International Emmy Kids Award for best Pre-School show. At the same awards, a Danish show called Ultras Sorte Kageshow won for 'Best Non-Scripted Entertainment', which sounds a bit creepy, until you find out the translation is 'Baking in the Dark', and then it sounds completely creepy, like being stalked by Paul Hollywood.

Entertainment: Hey Duggee! is difficult not to love. The pace and tone are warm, energetic and playful, and there is a lot of self-awareness that is lacking in, say, let's pick on Bing again. Most funny is the fact that I watch the show in Yorkshire, a county where a 'Duggee' is a derogatory term for someone who has found themselves, by no fault or complete fault of their own, in the lowest set in a subject at school. It is like calling a show 'Hey Pleb!' or 'Hey Jeeves!' if you went to Eton.

At a first glance the Flash animation looks as if it's quite lazy - the demands of pre-school TV ensure plenty of content at the lowest cost. However, the animation style is probably one of its greatest strengths - the minimalism that works so well with web comics like XKCD helps you focus on the difficult plot points. There is a lovely surrealism to Hey Duggee! - not the dreamy hippy schtick of In the NightGarden, but perhaps something more in the way of magic realism crossed with a folk song.

Characters so simple, even a highly trained professional animator could design them.

Ratings:

Sex: Nothing to get your pulse racing, although Duggee's shadow/silhouette could be considered somewhat disturbing... 2/10

Once Duggee stops waving, we all get very scared very quickly.

Music: A clear strong point. The mandolin and/ or ukulele theme is fun, and does not earworm in the irritating habit of Raa Raa or the Teletubbies. There's also some unexpected dalliances with what sounds like 1930s swing music during montages. Essentially, the producers have asked themselves the most important question in children's TV - not 'what would the children like?' - but 'what would I like?' 8/10

Plausibility: One of the most endearing elements of this (or any other) children's show is also one of the most subtle. As the animal parents transport the Squirrels to Duggee's and pick them up later, you might note that the crocodile (named Happy) is dropped off by an elephant, heavily implying that Happy is adopted. Nothing is made of this in the show, but I can't really call to mind any other feature in any other CBeebies broadcast which shows that kind of empathy. However, that is not to say that the channel does not champion other minority groups, as in Mr Tumble's output, and their employment of Cerrie Burnell. Obviously the rest of it is largely fantastical - sadly even the notion of a scout hut is perhaps a bit too much of a throwback to a bygone time for a lot of Young People Today™. 6/10

Education: Given the implausibilities mentioned above, it is not much of a surprise that the educational nature of the show falls largely under 'soft skills' rather than actual subject knowledge. To whit, friendship, teamwork, and co-operation are centre-stage in each episode, plus the comforting reminder that not every seemingly inappropriate children's supervisor has a sinister dark side. Duggee is very much to his Squirrels what Mr Poppy is to Nativity! On another level, if I was a child, and had a basic working knowledge of computers, I would be inspired to learn how Flash works, and seeing what I could do with it. However, I lack the knowledge, skills, inclination, creativity, and time in the day, so I will have to rely on straightforward blogging templates for the time being. 7/10.

Overall: Well played, everyone. 8/10