Hey, hey,
Are you ready to play?
It's time to come and play with the Tweenies
Hey hey,
Whatdya say?
Come along and play with the Tweenies.
You can sing with us,
You can run about and jump and shout,
You can dance with us,
Take a chance with us,
It's OK what do you say?
Every day!
Come and play!
The Tweenies is another of the BBC's afternoon children's TV shows, aimed at a
slightly older audience (3-7 years old) than that of the Teletubbies.
Each episode we follow the antics of Milo, Jake, Fizz, Bella and Doodles the
Dog - who (along with the adults, Max and Judy) spend 20 minutes every weekday
discovering something new about life and themselves (this usually comes across
as rather moralistic, much like Sesame Street). This, combined with the
five central activities (chosen by the Tweenie Clock, "Where will it
stop?"), song time, story time, messy time, news time and telly time,
makes The Tweenies pretty much everything you could ask for in a children's TV
program.
The costumes seem to be based on the furry Teletubbies but in "larger than life"
humaniod form. For instance, Bella is a blue four year old girl and Milo is
a purple four year old boy. Although their hands are anatomically correct, their
feet are extraordinarily large and their faces are more cartoon like - big white
eyes, round face with a wide mouth and thick woolly hair.
(reading this over, my description makes them sound more like
mammoths than people but frankly, if anyone can describe what a Tweenie looks
like, I promise to be mightily impressed)
In all, there are seven main characters:
Bella is nearly five and being the eldest and the tallest, is often the most
bossy.
Milo is four, he's the clown of the group, often seen getting down and
dirty.
Jake is the youngest Tweenie, at just three years old. The baby of the group
he's easily led by his best friend Milo and the two girls.
Fizz is nearly four, definitely the pink wearing, ballet dancing girlie of the
group. Although she and Bella are best friends, she gets on with Jake quite well.
Doodles is the playgroup's red and yellow dog. He's enthusiastic about
playing with the Tweenies and "talks" pretty much like Scooby-Doo.
Judy is the mother adult figure. She is often found making and doing,
singing loud action songs and generally playing with the Tweenies.
Max is the older father (grandparental) figure. With greying hair and a
soothing attitude he likes to read the Tweenies stories and sings the more gentle songs.
Oh, and Doodles is his dog.
Spinoffs from the series include multiple
videos,
games, a live
stage production,
a weekly
comic magazine and (so far) four
United Kingdom Top 40 hits:
The whole program is bright, colourful and fun. It is hardly surprising that it has
become an icon for the UK's student population (in much the same way that The
Teletubbies did - as the 3:30pm slot is right after lectures finish or just after they get
out of bed!) as well as being popular with the under 7s.
Come and play!
Sources:
http://www.bbc.co.uk
http://www.bath.ac.uk/~bssnrw/chartidx.html
http://www.thetweenies.freeserve.co.uk
Snicker Furfoot tells me "I would describe The Tweenies as human-sized puppets (ala' Krofft Productions, Inc., made to resemble the characters from Marc Brown's famous children's series and show, Arthur"
I agree... And I'm impressed... :D