Teletubbies

Teletubbies is a BBC children's television series, particularly aimed at babies and preschool children, produced from 1997 to 2001 by Ragdoll Productions. It was created by Anne Wood CBE, Ragdoll's creative director, and Andrew Davenport, who wrote each of the show's 365 episodes. more...

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Narrated by Tim Whitnall, the programme was a rapid critical and commercial success in Britain and abroad, particularly notable for its high production values; it won a BAFTA in 1998.

Although the show is aimed at children between the ages of one and four, it has been a substantial cult hit with older generations, particularly university students. "Teletubbies Say Eh-Oh!", a single based on the show's theme song, reached number 1 in the UK Singles Chart in December 1997 and remained in the Top 75 for 32 weeks, selling over a million copies.

Overview

The programme features four colourful tubby characters: Tinky Winky, Dipsy, Laa-Laa and Po, who live within a futuristic dome (the "Tubbytronic Superdome"), set in a landscape of rolling grassland. The environment is dotted with unusually talkative flowers and periscope-like "voice trumpets". The only natural fauna are rabbits (although birds are often heard, particularly blackcaps and wrens). The climate is always sunny and pleasant save for occasional inclement days, with rain and puddles, and snow at Christmas time.

The teletubbies like to gather on moo-moo hill when the look through their Television stomachs. This name has been recently created by people who watch the show and has not been embraced by the creators.

The Teletubbies are played by actors dressed in bulky costumes, although the sets are designed to give no sense of scale. The costumes vaguely resemble large spacesuits, although the Tubbies appear not to wear clothes. They are instead furry, and have metallic silver-azure rectangular "screens" adorning their abdomens. These screens are used to segue into short film sequences, which are generally repeated at least once. When the series is shown in different countries around the world, the film inserts are to be tailored to suit local audiences (The British inserts are default).

The Teletubbies have the body proportions, behaviour and language of toddlers. The pacing and design of the show was developed by cognitive psychologist, Andrew Davenport, who structured the show to fit the attention spans of the target audience. The repetition of practically every word is familiar to everyone who has ever worked with young children.

The Teletubbies speak in a gurgling baby language which is the subject of some controversy among educationalists, some of whom argue that this supposedly made-up talk is not good for children (a similar complaint was made forty years previously about another children's series, Flower Pot Men). Tubbies are at the stage of understanding speech but not yet fully capable of articulating it, exactly like their target audience. They often simply groan in disapproval in situations where a human toddler would throw a tantrum. The Teletubbies' catch-phrases are Eh-oh (hello), as in: Eh-oh, Laa-Laa, to which Laa-Laa will respond, Eh-oh, ; "Uh-oh", a common toddler response to anything untoward; "Run away! Run away!", especially from Dipsy; and "Bye-bye" at least four times in a row. Laa-Laa, when flustered, will explode with "Bibberly cheese!", which is as angry as they get. Perhaps the most common exclamation, however, is "Big hug!" which one or more of the Teletubbies will invariably call for during the course of an episode, resulting in an enthusiastic group hug ("Teletubbies love each other very much", confirms the narrator).

Read more at Wikipedia.org