Returning to his home town of Brisbane in 2009, Brumm set up a small animation studio and started to toy with the idea of making an Australian Peppa Pig. During the day, Brumm attended the University of Charlie and Lola (working as an animator on the drily funny BBC children’s show from 2005 to 2008) while at night he took classes at the College of Peppa Pig (he was mates with some of the creatives on the wildly popular cartoon).
Other acquaintances admitted they dreaded the new series, aware that however toxic their fascination, they would have to keep watching Bandit’s exploits for the same reason they tuned in to watch Serena Williams or the latest Succession – to pay homage to the best of the best.ī luey’s Australian creator Joe Brumm worked towards his cartoon while living in London in the 2000s. “He makes DIY look sort of transcendent,” a friend texted, after watching a Bluey episode about flat-packed garden furniture. Bandit is heaven to his own kids and so, in the eyes of many parents I know, he is hell.
Bandit has neat, apt truisms and he’s ready to offer them at a moment’s notice. Bandit invests in his daughters’ dreamed-up scenarios without stinting or sighing or checking the time. Bluey’s dad seems to exist to give parents another reason to lose sleep. In fact, Bandit seems to spend much of his time at home, and much of that time immersed in the imaginary worlds of one or both of his daughters.Īt which point we can go no further in this precis without pausing to say: fucking Bandit. Chilli drives a 4WD to work at the local airport and Bandit, the dad, is nominally an archaeologist. Bingo and Chilli are orange dogs and Bluey and Bandit are blue.
We’ve learned a lot, about perseverance in the bike episode about the pressures of late-stage capitalism in the one about the tooth.īluey lives in a big house in suburban Brisbane with her four-year-old sister Bingo, her mother Chilli and her father Bandit. Play date? Bike lesson? First bit of money from the tooth fairy? We have been through all this and more with Bluey. The title character is a six-year-old girl who is faced each episode with a developmental event. This is an addictive, joyous, witty, smug, obscurely wounding piece of children’s programming a show that since its launch in 2018 has inspired devotion from viewers of all ages, as well as a hit album, a touring play, an Emmy, threads of anxious sociopolitical debate, and a podcast for grownups that dissects each episode as if Bluey were the most prestigious of prestige TV.Ī quick primer, for those not familiar with the 100-plus episodes that have appeared online to date, either via the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), where the show originated, or on BBC iPlayer and Disney+, where Bluey has lived in the UK, US and much of Europe since early 2020. H ave adults been this eager to get their hands on something meant for children since the apex years of Harry Potter? Has there been this much fan excitement for a seven-minute piece of art since the 60s, and Hey Jude? Later this summer, when a third season of the Australian cartoon Bluey appears on streaming platforms in Europe and the US, parents and carers will usher their children in front of a convenient screen – and they’ll hang around to watch an episode (or two, or 10) themselves.